Tiny CMS, Big Ideas: A Food Cart Ledger

I spent an afternoon watching Bu Lia sell sate on Jalan Sabang. Her CMS is a single exercise book, ruled by hand.

Every page is one day. Left column is stock in, right is stock out. A red stamp says LUNAS when a customer pays up. At closing, she draws one thick line, writes the day's total, then rips the carbon copy for her nephew who handles the morning market run.

No migrations. No auth. Just a ledger that has to survive rain.

What it taught me

• Write the minimal record that lets you reconcile tomorrow. Everything else is vanity fields.
• Make the "publish" action physical. For Bu Lia, it is the carbon tear. For us, it is the git push.
• Design for the closing routine. If the end-of-day ceremony is clumsy, the whole system rots.

If your product feels over-engineered, try describing it as a sate cart for a day. What would Bu Lia cut first?