Platform · building
Lotline
An automotive CRM for car dealerships — pipeline, texting, desking, inventory and reporting in one system, with an AI layer that reads the conversation.
- Year
- 2026
- Disciplines
- Product, platform engineering, integrations
- Stack
- TypeScriptNestJSReactPostgres
The brief
The dealership CRM problem is not storage. It is follow-up.
A dealership loses deals in the gaps: a lead nobody called, a text that went unanswered, a number quoted from memory. The incumbents store the record well and do very little to close the gap. Lotline was built as an augmented-intelligence competitor in that market — the same system of record, plus an engine that reads every conversation and tells a rep what to do next.
What we built
- 01
A pipeline that shows the clock
A kanban board per rooftop with configurable stages, deal age, and an SLA state that surfaces the leads nobody has contacted yet — the failure mode that actually costs the sale.
- 02
Texting with the consent gate in the send path
Two-way SMS through Twilio, threaded into the deal, with per-channel consent checked on every send rather than at the UI. A refusal is a normal, logged outcome; the evidence lives in its own table, separate from the current flag.
- 03
Desking that computes, not guesses
Finance and lease payments calculated side by side on the deal — term, rate, cash down, residual and fees — so a number quoted to a customer comes from the system rather than a phone calculator.
- 04
A live DMS feed with its own health reporting
Inventory and service history syncing from the dealer management system behind an adapter seam, with sync-health cards, aged units flagged, and bad VIN check digits caught rather than silently imported.
- 05
Reporting on rollups, plus a plain-English builder
A worker sweeps aggregates so reports read pre-computed rollups instead of scanning the transaction tables, and a question box lets a manager ask for a cut that no one built a screen for.
- 06
A rep app that buzzes
React Native (Expo) app carrying pipeline, tasks and conversations, with push when a lead arrives or an SLA breaks. Deliberately narrower than the web app — the phone is for responding, not administering.
Screens
-
The pipeline board — stages per rooftop, deal age, and leads nobody has contacted yet flagged in red. -
A deal: health score, the desking ribbon computing two finance terms and a lease side by side, and the full customer timeline below. -
Two-way SMS inside the deal, with delivery status, consent pills, and a live socket indicator. -
Inventory from the DMS feed, with sync-health cards, aged units flagged, and a bad VIN check digit caught on import.
Where it stands
In active development, nine phases deep — foundation, CRM, conversation, AI, reporting, desking, marketing, DMS, report builder and mobile all landed. The repository is private; the screenshots are captured from the app running against Postgres and Redis, with entirely invented dealership data.
- Tables, multi-tenant with RLS
- 43 Tables, multi-tenant with RLS
- Apps: API, worker, web, mobile
- 4 Apps: API, worker, web, mobile
- Phases shipped
- 9 Phases shipped
Next case
Kingdom Athletics