Skip to main content
Version: Next (nightly)

Bundles

A bundle is a ready-made starting point. Rather than enabling modules and adding fields one at a time in a blank workspace, you pick a bundle close to what you're tracking and it sets things up for you: the right modules, the fields that matter, some sensible views, and a set of features already turned on.

Named for what you track, not how you work​

A bundle is named for the thing it's about (Yarn, Lego, 3D Printers), not for a workflow. What it actually does comes from the features it turns on. Two people can start from the same Yarn bundle and end up with different apps because they checked different feature boxes. One tracks dye lots, another logs projects, a third runs a shop.

The name tells you where to start, the features tell you what it can do, and you're locked into neither. You can toggle features and enable more modules whenever you want.

From a bundle or from scratch​

Wherever you browse bundles, you're looking at one catalog. The dashboard's "More ways to start" browser and the Bundles marketplace show the same tiles in the same two groups: ready-made bundles (one kind of thing, its fields already shaped) first, then full setups that wire several modules together. One search box covers all of it.

Starting from a bundle is the fast path: a working setup you can use right away and reshape as you go. Starting from scratch means enabling modules and defining fields yourself, which is there for when nothing fits or you want full control. Either way you land in the same place, a workspace made of modules, so a bundle is a head start rather than a cage.

What an install tells you​

Bundles come in two shapes, and only one of them puts something new in your nav. Installing one tells you which kind it was and what it did, so a successful install never looks like a failed one:

  • A bundle that brings its own table says so: "Yarn is set up, with its own Yarn table." You get a new entry in the nav, with its own items and its own fields.
  • A bundle that adds to a table you already have says that instead: "It adds to Inventory rather than making a table of its own, so there is no new entry in the nav."
  • Each line of the summary links to where that part lives. Fields link to the table they were added to (Open Inventory), and automations link to See the wires, where you can see each one, what triggers it, and when it last fired.

When you install from a scan card while filing items, the same summary appears as a short message instead, so it does not interrupt what you were doing.

Places a bundle sets up​

Some bundles know roughly where their things live. Groceries knows a kitchen usually has a fridge, a freezer and a pantry, so installing it offers to create those places. Three things are true of that offer:

  • It is a question, not an action. You see what would be created before agreeing, and you can decline. A workspace might be an office, a workshop or a van, and nobody should have a freezer they did not ask for.
  • An existing place is used, never duplicated. If you already have a Kitchen, the Fridge and Freezer go inside the one you have. Anything already in your Kitchen stays exactly where it is.
  • Only what is missing gets created. If you already made a Fridge yourself, only the Freezer is added.

They are created as containers rather than as plain labels, which means you can print a QR label for the freezer, scan it, and have everything you scan afterwards filed into it. The kitchen version of this is on the Groceries page.

Changing a bundle later​

  • Turning a bundle's features on or off is one step that re-applies the bundle around your collections rather than removing and reinstalling it, and the confirmation says how many records it read back in place, so "your entities stay" is checked rather than promised. A collection only a feature you turned off had set up is removed when it is empty and kept, with its records, when it is not.
  • Patch and minor updates apply on their own, on startup and hourly, whether or not anyone opens the dashboard. The dashboard only reports what has not landed yet.

Bundles are just configuration​

Under the hood a bundle is data, not code: a declared set of enabled modules, features, fields, views, and wires. A bundle can also create a named section of its own and ship a custom app with it. Groceries does exactly that: installing it brings a What's on hand app, a vending-machine view of the kitchen with a quantity badge and a status dot on each item, and a use-it-or-lose-it list ordered by what expires first. It answers "what do we actually have" without opening the fridge, and it arrives built rather than as something you assemble. That's why they can be authored, including by describing what you want in plain language and letting Cobblr generate the bundle for you. See Authoring a bundle.