AI ADVISOR · GUIDED COMMERCE
CAIRN — THE ADVISOR
Guided AI Shopping · Built on Claude · Working Concept
THE IN-STORE CONVERSATION, REBUILT ONLINE.
Most shop websites are product catalogs — but the in-store experience is a conversation. A visitor arrives carrying a need ("I can't sleep", "a gift for my anxious sister") and is left to browse categories alone. Cairn closes that gap: a working AI shopping advisor for a fictional wellness & crystal retailer, built and deployed end-to-end as a Black Oar Studio concept — strategy, UX, design, catalog modeling, prompt engineering, deployment.
HOW IT WORKS
GUIDED INTENT ENTRY
No scrolling through a hundred products. The visitor says what’s going on — "I can’t sleep", "a gift for my anxious sister" — in a tap or in their own words.
AI ADVISOR ON CLAUDE
A conversational guide built on Claude walks the visitor to two to four products that actually fit — each with a plain reason why, the way a good shopkeeper would.
ONE-QUESTION CLARIFICATION
When a request is ambiguous — "cracking hands" could be seasonal dryness or a flare — the advisor asks one short question before recommending. Never an interrogation.
CATALOG-CONSTRAINED AI
The model can only recommend products that exist in the catalog. That’s the difference between something you’d let touch revenue and a chat gimmick.
SERVER-SIDE VALIDATION
Every recommendation is validated against the catalog on the server before it reaches the page. API keys and logic live server-side — never in the browser.
A CONSIDERED BASKET
The journey ends in a small curated basket with a reason on every pick — not an abandoned search. In production, the catalog is a live feed from the store’s platform.
STACK
CLICK A TERM TO DECODE
The construction system behind the site. Astro delivers every page as lean, ready-to-render HTML instead of shipping a heavy app the browser has to assemble first.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → Your site loads noticeably faster than typical website builders — and search engines reward exactly that.
Small programs that run on Cloudflare's global network — the server-side brain of a project. Here they hold the AI logic and API keys, which never reach the browser.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → Business logic and secrets stay protected — and responses come from a server near the visitor, not across the world.
Where the site lives. Your pages are stored on hundreds of servers around the world at once — every visitor is served from the one closest to them.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → Fast loading in Bangkok, Berlin and New York alike — with practically zero downtime.
Direct access to Claude, Anthropic's AI model — built into a project as a component, with our own rules and guardrails, instead of a generic chatbot bolted on.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → AI that behaves like part of your product — on-brand, on-task, under your control.
The AI can only recommend products that actually exist in the shop catalog — and the server double-checks every recommendation before it reaches the page.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → No invented products, no out-of-stock suggestions — AI you can trust near revenue.
A self-built, fully deployed demonstration — not a paid client project. Everything works; nothing about its results is invented.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → You can click through and verify the capability yourself instead of trusting a case-study number.
TRY IT YOURSELF.
Cairn runs as its own working demo — tell the advisor what's going on and watch it walk you to a basket.
