Unlocking. The panel opens on an Admin Access card. Type the admin password and press Unlock Admin Area → (or just hit Enter). The eye icon next to the field shows what you typed. A wrong password shakes the card and clears the field — there is no lockout, just try again.

Session. You stay unlocked while you are working. After 5 minutes with no clicking, typing or scrolling the password card comes back. Anything that reloads the page (for example ImagePipe's Publish button) can also bring it back.

Navigating. The tabs run across the top: CRM, Documents, Deal Simulator, Finance, Automation, Content, ImagePipe, SPIRIT, Investors, Patents, Brand, Help, Keys. The left sidebar shows the same tabs grouped into three apps — cycleERP (O2C: CRM, Documents, Deal Simulator, plus Automation), Studio (Content Generator, ImagePipe) and More (SPIRIT, Investors, Gallery Manager, Patents, Brand). Top tabs and sidebar links do the same thing; use whichever you prefer.

Dark mode is the default across the whole site, admin included. The Brand tab also has a background-effect switch (Lava / Bubbles / Off) that applies to your browser everywhere on the site.

Leaving. ← Back to site in the top bar or the sidebar returns you to the storefront. Sign out shows the password card again.

1. Shopify is the single source of truth. Leads, quotes, invoices and closed accounting periods are stored on the shop as metaobjects (cw_lead, cw_quote, cw_invoice, cw_ledger_period), and this admin reads and writes them through the cyclewash-admin-proxy worker. Orders and customers stay native Shopify records — nothing is duplicated.
2. The local cycleERP app on the Mac does the heavy work. It lives in ~/cycleERP (Docker, web UI on http://localhost:8765) and owns the raw ledger, the BWA / period close, the DATEV export and the bulk outreach sending; it pushes only the computed summaries up to Shopify. DATEV and tax data never leave the Mac.
3. Your API keys stay in your browser. Gemini, fal.ai, ScrapeGraph, Apify and the Gmail connection are stored in this browser only — never in Shopify, never in the theme. A new laptop, a different browser or clearing your browsing data means entering them again.
4. Drafts are not published. Everything the Content tab saves to Shopify is saved as a draft. Making something public is always a separate, deliberate step in the Shopify admin.

What it is for. Your daily desk: every lead, the pipeline board, your mailbox and the tools that find new prospects.

• Pipeline at a glance at the top: switch between Month, Quarter, Year and All-time for revenue, open pipeline, conversion, average cycle, campaign emails and replies, plus a funnel and source breakdown.
• Leads desk. Switch between 📋 List and 📊 Board. In List you get search (name, company, email), tier chips (Quoted, Distributors, Warm inbound, OutreachPro, Exact only, NDA), a source filter, 50 rows per page, and Download CSV which exports exactly what the filter is currently showing. Click a row to expand the full record.
• Board. Six columns — New, Contacted, Qualified, Opportunity, Won, Lost — with a lead count and a weighted euro value per column. Drag a card, or use the little stage dropdown on the card. Export stages JSON / Import stages JSON / Reset moves let you back up and restore your manual moves.
• Gmail. Connect Gmail opens Google's consent screen. You then get your folders and labels on the left and threads on the right, a reader with ↩ Reply via Gmail, ✨ AI Summarize + Draft and + Add sender to pipeline, and a ✉ Compose window with attachments. The Folder Crawler below scans selected labels over a date range and pulls out every contact you have exchanged mail with, then offers Export CSV or + Push all to pipeline.
• Lead scrapers. Three lanes: OpenStreetMap (free, no key), ScrapeGraph and Apify. Fill in keywords, industry, country, city and size, run it, review the results, keep what you want.
• NDA 3D leads. Load NDA access log shows everyone who unlocked the 3D configurator behind the NDA gate; each row can be merged into the lead list.
• Email campaigns. A four-step builder: 1 Audience → 2 Template → 3 AI Polish → 4 Review & Send, with merge tags, starter templates and a send rate in seconds between mails.

What it is for. Turning a Shopify order or draft order into a proper German/English sales document as a PDF.

• 1. Pick order. Start typing an order number or a customer name. Draft orders are listed first (amber Draft badge), live orders after (Live badge). ↻ Reload refetches the list.
• Set the details on the left: reference number (leave blank and one is generated), document date, valid-until date, VAT handling (Auto by shipping country, 19% MwSt, 0% EU, 0% Export), payment terms (prepayment, on receipt, net 14, net 30) and document language (Deutsch or English).
• 2. Generate. Six document types: Offer (Angebot), Sales Order (Auftragsbestätigung), Proforma Invoice, Invoice (Rechnung), Packing List (Packliste) and Delivery Note (Lieferschein). Click one and the PDF is built and shown in a preview window.
• From the preview you can ⬇ Download PDF, ☁ Save to Shopify or open 📁 Saved documents. Saving happens automatically the moment the document is generated — the button is only a retry.
• Saved documents keeps everything in folders (Offers, Sales Orders, Proforma Invoices, Invoices, Packing Lists, Delivery Notes). Per row you can download, archive (hide, reversible) or remove.
• Document style sets the accent colour, logo on/off, company address, e-mail, web, VAT ID, bank, IBAN and BIC for all future documents.

What it is for. Working out, before you promise anything, whether a discounted deal still makes money — and how far you can go.

• Presets load a machine in one click: Mini Basic, Mini Platinum, Pro Black, Pro Platinum, OASIS. ⚡ Load Black Deals loads the promotion configuration.
• Machines in this deal — add as many lines as you like with + Add machine, each with quantity, net unit price and its own margin percentage.
• The discount slider is the main control. Under it you set the cost of the free cleaner and free commissioning per machine, the distributor/channel margin, your margin floor (the lowest margin you are willing to accept) and the deposit percentage.
• Read the four numbers: Customer net, Gross profit, Gross margin % and Margin given away.
• The verdict banner tells you where you stand: ✅ Healthy (above your floor, and how much more you could discount), ⚠️ Below floor (with the maximum discount that still holds the floor) or ⛔ Loss-making (you are selling below cost).
• Turn this into a quote — enter the customer e-mail, optionally tick "also create Shopify draft order", press 💾 Save quote. The deal is stored on Shopify as a cw_quote record.
• Deal content at the bottom generates ready-to-copy promotion text (campaign name, valid-from/until, order-by date, language), or hands the brief over to the Content Generator.

What it is for. Looking at the books: period results computed by the local cycleERP app, and the list of invoices that are still unpaid.

• Four headline numbers for the latest closed period: Revenue, Gross profit, Opex and Net result.
• Periods · BWA / P&L — every closed period, newest first, with revenue, COGS, gross profit, opex, net, when it was computed, and a BWA link that opens the snapshot file the local app uploaded.
• Open items (AR) — every invoice that is not marked paid, with amount, due date, days overdue in red, status and a link to the PDF, plus a Total open line.
• DATEV export — Open local cycleERP ↗ takes you to the local app where the export is generated; Re-check tests whether that app is currently running.
• Reload refetches everything from Shopify.

What it is for. Making the system react on its own: when something happens, check some conditions, then do something.

• How automation works is a short explainer you can fold open at the top. In one line: an event happens, a rule listening to that event checks its conditions, and if they all match its actions run.
• State machines show the allowed paths. An entity only ever moves along the arrows — nothing can jump a stage.
• Active rules lists what exists, each with an enable/disable toggle.
• ＋ New rule opens a builder with no JSON typing: give the rule a name, pick the WHEN event, add IF conditions (all must match; no conditions means it always fires) and THEN actions (they run in order). A live JSON preview shows exactly what will be saved. Then Save rule, Copy JSON or Cancel.
• Recent activity shows rules that actually fired, plus a separate list of your own dry-runs from this browser.
• Test is the dry-run console: pick an event, edit the little payload, press Run dry ▶ and see which rules would match — without anything actually happening.

What it is for. Producing blog posts, social captions and help articles — and saving them into Shopify as drafts.

• Left: the brief. Choose content type (Blog Post, LinkedIn, Instagram Reel, Facebook, TikTok, Press Release, Newsletter), topic, target audience and language, add any extra context, then press ⚡ Generate Draft.
• Five output tabs fill in at once: Content, SEO Meta, AEO Schema, Social and Internal links, with an SEO and AEO score above them.
• Three buttons under the output: + Append FAQ, 📋 Copy active tab and ✉ Send to backlog →.
• Right: media. Three sub-tabs — Library (everything already synced, filter by source and category), Generate (write a prompt, pick an aspect ratio, press ✦ Generate image) and Capture (text read out of your captured images; click a quote to drop it into the draft). Click several library tiles to select them in order, then use ↳ Insert into draft or ⚡ Queue + schedule.
• Journal Editor at the bottom. The Publish to switch chooses 📓 Journal or 🛟 Help Center. Fill in title, slug, tags, author, lede and hero image, write the body, then Save draft (this browser) or Save draft to Shopify.

The site runs in English plus 9 languages — German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. There are two separate things that get translated, handled two different ways.

The interface (buttons, product specs, navigation, FAQs) is translated in the theme's own language files and is 100% complete in all 9. Nothing to do here; it is part of the theme.

Blog articles live in Shopify's database, not the theme, so they are translated by a machine translator (Gemini) and written back to Shopify as real translations. Two ways this happens:

1. New articles translate themselves. In the Content tab's Journal editor there is an “Auto-translate to 9 languages on save” checkbox, on by default. Save an article and, a few seconds later, it exists in all 9 languages. A small toast counts them off (“Translating German… 1/9”) and ends with “Translations: 9 live”. You never touch it.
2. The existing backlog was translated in one bulk pass with a script (scripts/blog-i18n-backfill.mjs). You would only re-run it if you imported a batch of old articles that pre-date the auto-translate checkbox — it skips anything already translated, so a re-run is safe and only fills gaps.

What is protected. Brand and product names — cycleWASH, LuftWASH, AntiGravity, ECO, STANDARD, Mini, Pro, OASIS — are kept in English in every language. Numbers, units and the HTML layout of an article are preserved exactly; only the readable text changes.

Seeing a translation. Add the language prefix to any blog URL: /de/blogs/news/… for German, /fr/… French, /pt/… Portuguese, /zh/… Chinese, and so on. The prefix is the short code even where the language is a regional one (Portugal, Simplified Chinese).

What it is for. Browsing every photo and video in the media library, and deciding which image sits in which spot on the website.

• Four views: Gallery (all media, filter by category, click for a full-size lightbox), Produced (text the pipeline generated, each with a Copy button), ⌂ Site and 🗂 Manage.
• Search and category chips at the top narrow the grid; Full screen gives the gallery the whole window (Esc leaves).
• Site view lists every page of the website — click one to open it in visual edit mode in a new tab. Below that, shop products can be opened with ◎ assign images to attach gallery images to a product carousel.
• Manage points at the Gallery Manager for reordering, recaptioning, adding and deleting public gallery items.
• With the local ImagePipe app running you also get a ● local pipe · edit mode badge and a gold Publish button, and each image in the lightbox gains Move (change category), ＋ Tag, ◎ Place (put it in a named slot on the site) and ✦ Social (write a caption from the website copy).

What it does. Real quotes from real customers, rendered at the top of the Proven Performance block — so every product page closes with customers first, then the figures that back them up. Entries are stored on the shop, not in the theme, so one edit here updates every page at once.

Adding one. Press + Add testimonial, fill the card, then Save. Company, Person quoted and the Quote are required; an entry missing any of the three is skipped rather than rendered half-empty. Website URL must start https:// or it is ignored and the company shows as plain text. Role is optional.

The logo. Press Upload logo to Shopify and pick a file — it goes straight to the Shopify CDN and the link fills itself in. You can also paste a CDN link from Content → Files, or type the filename of an image already in the theme. Either way the preview under the field loads the real image, so a wrong path is obvious before you save rather than after it is live.

Ordering and removing. Each card has ↑ / ↓ to move it and Delete to drop it. Nothing takes effect until Save; dropping from several entries to fewer asks for confirmation first.

If Save fails. Copy JSON puts the whole list on your clipboard and Metafield editor ↗ opens the same field in Shopify admin, where you can paste it by hand. Same destination, manual route.

What it is for. A reference sheet for the SPIRIT platform: the app, the operator and technician portals, and the Walter controller in the machines. Nothing here is editable.

• The four platforms and the end-to-end flow between customer, operator, technician and the transport layer.
• Route breakdown for the three portals: Operator Dashboard, Customer App and Technician Portal.
• Walter ESP32-S3 — the hardware pin layout and the commands the machine understands (start wash, stop wash, test pulse, status, reboot, set mode), plus the default cycle timings.
• Technology stack and the product roadmap by quarter.
• Four preview tiles open the live portals in correctly sized popup windows: Operator Dashboard (desktop), Customer App (mobile), Technician Portal (tablet) and Platform Overview. The 📋 button copies the dashboard link.
• Docker setup with copy-ready commands for running the backend yourself.

What it is for. The investor narrative in one place, so you can show it or send it without hunting for slides.

• Key metrics, the product lineup with indicative prices, the technology and IP summary and the revenue projection chart.
• Series A use of funds and what investors get.
• Go-to-market by segment and the contact card for the IR enquiries.
• 💼 View Full Deck opens the public investor page; 🔗 Copy Share Link copies its address.
• Preview buttons show the live investor page at desktop, tablet and mobile size, or ↗ Open in new tab.

What it is for. Keeping an eye on the whole protection portfolio — patents, utility models, registered designs and trademarks — and on which fees fall due next.

• Four counters: active filings, granted, pending and fees due in the next 90 days.
• Filter by family, by status (Granted / Pending / Abandoned), or tick Only entries with upcoming fees to see just what needs paying.
• Family cards group the filings; click a card header to fold it open or closed. Each row shows country, reference, type, status and the next fee with a coloured dot.
• The legend explains the dots: red for a fee due within 90 days, amber within 180 days, blue later.
• PDF, XLSX and Register download the underlying overview files.

What it is for. The canonical brand reference for anyone designing or building something cycleWASH — agency, developer or partner.

• Site Background at the top: 🌋 Lava, 🫧 Bubbles or ✨ Off.
• Colour — the four named colours (Glacier Blue, Signal Gold, Mist White, Midnight Ink), what each is for, and the rule that gold is reserved for the one action that matters.
• Typography — Outfit for the brand, Inter for legibility, Playfair Display only in the Journal, with the size scale.
• Logo & mark — construction, clearspace, background rules and where the original source files live.
• Layout & depth and Motion — spacing rhythm, radii, hairlines, and how animation should behave.
• Reference sheet — the one-page palette and style summary to drop into decks and partner handoffs.

What it is for. Entering and clearing the keys that the other tabs need, without hunting for the field that owns them.

• Each key gets a card with a masked field, a show/hide eye, Save and Clear, and a status pill reading Set or Not set.
• Gemini AI (free tier) — powers the AI e-mail drafting in Gmail and the campaign polish step. Get one from Google AI Studio.
• FAL.ai Images (paid) — AI image generation in Content Studio → Generate.
• ScrapeGraph (paid) and Apify (paid) — the two paid lead-scraper lanes.
• Shopify Admin token — lets the CRM and the document generator read orders and products.
• Admin proxy password — leave it blank unless you were told otherwise; blank means "use the default".
• Gmail OAuth is shown here but connected from the Gmail panel in the CRM tab.

What it is for. Everything explanatory in one tab: this handbook, the published help articles, and the SPIRIT platform documentation.

• This handbook — the blocks you are reading now.
• Help articles — the guides written for customers. They appear here and on the public help page.
• SPIRIT Platform Documentation — the longer technical reference, available in every shop language.