How Stardeck Works
Understand how your app, Stardeck's Modules, the agents, environments and updates fit together.
Your app is one product made of Stardeck's Modules. Your own coding agent, such as Claude Code, changes it, and you publish it to production when it's ready. Starcat helps you run the business around it, and updates from Stardeck keep the Modules current.
flowchart LR
MODS["Stardeck's Modules<br/>POS · Booking · Customers · …"] --> APP["Your app<br/>one product, one repository"]
DEV["Your coding agent<br/>(Claude Code, Codex, Cursor…)"] -->|"changes code"| APP
APP -->|"preview, then publish"| PROD["Production<br/>your-slug.stardeck.site"]
STARCAT["Starcat"] -->|"operates, doesn't change code"| PROD
UPD["Stardeck updates"] -->|"new Module versions"| APPThe rest of this page takes each part in turn. The example is a café called Lamp Coffee that sells at the counter and takes table bookings.
Your app is one product
An app is one codebase that you publish as a whole. Lamp Coffee is one app, even though its staff use a counter register, its guests book a table online, and the owner reads reports in the back office. Those are Surfaces: experiences inside the app, each with its own name, URL and icon. Create a second app only for a separate product with its own owner, data or release schedule. See One Product, One App.
Modules give it its features
A Module is a feature Stardeck builds and maintains: POS, Booking, Customers, Finance and 19 more. Every app comes with all of them as source code. The business type set during setup, such as Restaurant or café, decides which ones staff see and what the pages are called. Lamp Coffee uses POS and Booking.
You don't edit a Module's code. You change its settings, words, sample data or screens, and build your own features on top. See Modules.
Agents build it and help run it
Each agent that works on a Stardeck app has its own job.
| Agent | Where it works | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Your coding agent | Your computer, connected over MCP | Writes the app's code: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent |
| Starcat Developer | An app's Build tab | The same job in the browser, for when you can't work locally |
| Starcat | The organization dashboard | Reads your apps and knowledge and acts on them, without changing code |
| Customer agents | LINE, Facebook, Instagram or your website | Answers your customers, with your team able to step in |
To add a loyalty stamp card to Lamp Coffee's register, ask your coding agent. To ask how many tables were booked last Friday, ask Starcat.
Changes reach customers through environments
Changes are built and tested against the app's sandbox: its private, non-live copy. The app
your coding agent runs on your computer reads the sandbox's data, and Starcat Developer works in the
sandbox in the cloud. A preview is a deployment of a branch at a link you can share for review.
Production is the live app at your-slug.stardeck.site or your own domain. A new app's sandbox and production read the same data
until you route the sandbox to its own branch in Settings → Data Stores. After that, a test order
in the sandbox never reaches production. See Branches and environment
routing and Environments.
Stardeck runs the services and keeps the Modules current
Stardeck hosts the app and runs its database, sign-in, payments, email, LINE messaging, scheduled jobs and monitoring. Your code calls them through Stardeck's SDKs, and Stardeck holds the payment and messaging credentials. See What Stardeck Runs for You.
When Stardeck releases a new version of the Modules, your app shows Update available. Taking the update merges the new version into your app and leaves your own code and changes in place. See Updates.
Quickstart
Create Lamp Coffee with your coding agent and run it locally