customPOS

Build your own point-of-sale. Download it. Own the code.
A free, config-driven POS builder — then customize it locally with Claude Code.
No subscription. No lock-in. Your software, your machine, your data.

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Status: working product, active build. The public home of customPOS — generalized from a real, in-production single-file POS running a two-location wet cleaner. A landing page, a builder wizard, a gallery of 24 ready-to-run trade templates, a full-featured engine, a sync hub, and a payments seam are all live and tested (77 browser suites, zero console errors). Star/watch to follow along.

What this is

Most point-of-sale software is something you rent: a monthly subscription, your data on someone else's server, and no way to change how it works. customPOS is the opposite.

You go to the builder, answer a few questions about your business, and download a single self-contained file that is your POS. It runs in a browser, stores its own data, needs no install and no build step — and the source code is yours. Keep it forever. Change anything. Owe no one.

Think Webflow or Squarespace — but you download and own the actual working code, not just the markup.

Why it works this way

• One file, zero build, runs offline. No servers to rent, no dependencies to break. Open it in Chrome and it works.
• You own it. MIT licensed. Download it and it's yours — no account required to keep using it.
• Customize it with AI. The download comes with its own map (a CLAUDE.md + code guide) so you can point Claude Code at the file and change prices, workflows, receipts, or anything else — in plain English, on your own computer.
• Modular. Turn on only what your business needs — inventory, delivery routes, staff time-clock, checklists, and more — and leave the rest off.

How we keep it free

The software is free and always will be. We make money only when you do — through an optional, built-in card-payment integration. If you choose to accept card payments, you sign up through our processor partner and we earn a small share of the processing that already costs you money no matter whose POS you use. Don't want card payments? The POS is still 100% free and fully yours. No paywalls, no feature gates, no subscription.

Software is free. Knowledge is free. This project is a deliberate stance on how technology — and AI — should serve people: by helping them own their tools, not rent them.

The card-payment module the free model rests on has a validated blueprint in docs/PAYMENTS-MODULE.md — a processor-agnostic interface with a certified CardConnect/CardPointe reference adapter, PCI-safe by design (the browser never touches a card number; credentials live only on the business's own server, never in the downloaded file).

Who it's for

Small businesses that want a real POS without a monthly bill or a vendor holding their data hostage — service shops (dry cleaners, laundromats, alterations, repair), food (cafés, a real burger joint with a kitchen display), retail (inventory, barcodes, receipts), and appointment/service businesses (salons with staff, commission, and a booking calendar). More business types to come.

What's built

• ✅ Landing page — index.html: the customPOS.com front door — the pitch, the honest monetization story, and the trust FAQ every owner asks. One self-contained file, light/dark.
• ✅ Config-driven engine — pos.html, one self-contained file. Everything below runs on it by config alone — a cleaner, a diner, a shop, and a salon on the exact same code:
  • Money: cash + change, cards (PCI-safe), house accounts (A/R), sales tax, discounts + coupon codes, tips + commission, deposits, split checks, refunds/voids, printable receipts.
  • Back office: end-of-day Z-report (by tender / category), cash-drawer count, labor hours, sales history day by day, reorder + A/R statements.
  • Operations: inventory (stock, low/out, receive), barcode scan + search, appointments (book → check-in), kitchen display with bump + prep timers, floor / table plan (a spatial state machine — tables, salon chairs, auto bays, spa rooms), quotes/estimates, checklists, capacity/pacing, per-item routing & fan-out, timers/SLAs, flags, modifiers, 86 counts.
  • People & customers: staff time-clock + PIN + clock-in welcome, roles/tips/commission, customer profiles + "the usual", loyalty + gift cards, text-when-ready, status board + customer tracker.
  • Worker rights (defaults tilt toward the worker): staff scheduling (weekly grid, OT flag, publish → text), breaks + real-time earnings with meal/rest reminders, time-off requests, shift coverage (no double-book / no hidden OT), incident reports + 🆘 panic alert, tip pooling by hours, and a worker portal — your own schedule, hours, and a pay estimate with overtime shown at 1.5×.
  • Business health (survive the hard days): labor as % of sales with a high-payroll flag, gross margin (cost of goods → real profit), top items by sales + margin, busy-hours bars to staff the rush, and a win-back list that re-invites lapsed regulars in one tap.
• ✅ The builder — builder.html: pick a trade, deep-configure clickable workstations & items, download your POS plus a generated CLAUDE.md. A gallery of 24 starter templates — retail, café, dry cleaner, repair, salon, bar, dispensary, bakery, butcher (by-weight), pizzeria, florist, laundromat, tattoo studio, the real Hamburger Barn, a full-service restaurant with a floor plan, and more — each ships with its trade's features already on. Many were seeded by AI personas role-playing real owners; contributing a new one is the easiest way to help. Live preview.
• ✅ Payments — a processor-agnostic interface with a simulator that works out of the box; the certified CardConnect/CardPointe adapter (docs/PAYMENTS-MODULE.md) swaps in on your own server. Onboarding a new merchant is one command: tools/validate-cardconnect.js runs the full Fiserv Integration-Validation transaction gauntlet against your UAT credentials and prints every retref mapped to the form's boxes (credentials come from env vars — no secrets in the repo).
• ✅ Payments service (any POS) — payments/pay-server.js: a standalone, zero-dependency card-processing microservice. Gives customPOS or a third-party POS certified CardConnect payments behind one neutral REST API (/charge, /refund, /void, /inquire, terminal + hosted-tokenizer) — PCI SAQ-A (card data never touches it), a shared-key gate, and a simulator so you can integrate before any merchant account exists. Full guide: payments/README.md.
• ✅ Multi-device hub — hub.js, a zero-dependency Node sync server so several devices (each a different station) share one live POS. Sync is opt-in (?hub=…); the downloaded POS is fully local otherwise.
• ✅ One-click build — node build.js → dist/custompos.html, a single self-contained file that runs the whole builder with no server (host it anywhere as customPOS.com).
• ✅ Tested — 58 browser test suites in tests/, each driving the real app, all green with zero console errors.

Next: the worker portal on personal-device auth, calendar-dated PTO balances, and hosting customPOS.com. The whole build story is in JOURNAL.md.

Try it

• The landing page: open index.html.
• Just the builder, no server: node build.js then open dist/custompos.html.
• Builder + engine over http: python3 -m http.server 8000 → visit http://localhost:8000/builder.html.
• The demo engine: open pos.html directly to play with the demo trades.
• Share a POS across devices: node hub.js then open http://<host>:8090/pos.html?hub=http://<host>:8090 on each device.

Run the tests

npm install
npx playwright install chromium              # playwright-core ships no browser
export CHROMIUM_EXE="$(node -e "console.log(require('playwright-core').chromium.executablePath())")"
npm test                                     # runs every tests/*.js, fails on any console error

CI runs the same suite on every push (see the badge above). A GitHub Pages workflow publishes the landing page + builder + demo engine (.github/workflows/pages.yml).

License

MIT © Brayden Sanders. Free to use, modify, and redistribute. When you download your POS, it's yours.