Architecture

Why the platform holds no domain, and what that buys you.

The split

The platform is the AI layer. Your product is the system of record. Neither reaches into the other’s database.

  Customer                ImpelLabs platform                Your product
 ─────────               ─────────────────              ──────────────
  WhatsApp  ──────────►  identity, channel
                         conversation, memory
                         retrieval, budget
                         the turn
                               │
                               │  tools/call        ┌──────────────────┐
                               └───────────────────►│  MCP server      │
                               ◄────────────────────│  your DB, your   │
                                    result          │  business rules  │
                                                    └──────────────────┘

The platform learns that a server offers a tool called search_products with a JSON schema, and that this workspace may call it. It does not learn what a product is, what a colourway is, or how you price one.

Why it is built this way

The platform used to hold products, carts and orders. Two things went wrong, and both are the reason for this contract:

1. Domain logic leaked upward

   Fields like fabric, colours, moq and set_info ended up in the platform’s generic catalogue type — one customer’s trade shaping the layer every customer runs on.

2. The model could not express the domain

   A “five colour set” was a free-text string, not a structure. No per-colour SKU, no per-colour stock. The vertical needed a data model the horizontal layer had no business owning.

3. So the domain moved out

   Products, carts and orders were removed from the platform entirely. What replaced them is this bridge.

What each side owns

Concern	Platform	Your product
Channel transport, delivery windows	✅
Customer identity across channels	✅
Conversation state, summary, memory	✅
Knowledge retrieval	✅
Tool execution, idempotency, metering	✅
Your data model		✅
Pricing, eligibility, stock		✅
Business rules and validation		✅
Fulfilment, invoicing, integrations		✅

Pricing and eligibility are yours, and must stay yours. The platform passes an opaque buyer_ref; your server decides what that buyer is entitled to. Never accept a price, a tier or a discount as a tool argument — a language model would then be choosing it.

The transport

MCP over Streamable HTTP: JSON-RPC 2.0 to a single endpoint. The platform implements three methods — initialize, tools/list and tools/call — and speaks protocol version 2025-06-18.

Nothing else is required of you. No SDK, no webhook back, no polling.