Frontline Copilot

AI-powered review triage for retail store managers.

An always-on system that ingests customer reviews from any source, uses Claude to classify them by category and severity, and routes actionable ones to the store manager's Airtable task list — with real-time Slack alerts for critical issues (food safety, staff conduct, health risks).

Also ships as an MCP server so store managers can query and triage conversationally from Claude Desktop.

Inspired by the emerging category of AI copilots for store operations.

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The problem

Store managers at multi-location retail chains drown in signal from customer reviews. Most are noise (praise or minor grumbles). A few are urgent (food safety, discrimination, injury risk). Most tools require the manager to read everything to find the few that matter — a losing battle at scale.

Frontline Copilot inverts this. Claude reads everything; the manager only sees what needs action.

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How it works

┌────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌────────────┐   ┌────────────┐
│  Reviews   │──▶│ Classifier   │──▶│  Airtable  │──▶│   Slack    │
│  (JSON /   │   │ (Claude API, │   │  (task     │   │  (critical │
│   Google)  │   │  tool use)   │   │  tracker)  │   │   alerts)  │
└────────────┘   └──────────────┘   └────────────┘   └────────────┘
                        │
                        ▼
                 ┌──────────────┐
                 │  MCP server  │◀── Claude Desktop, Cursor, ...
                 │  (3 tools)   │
                 └──────────────┘

Each review is classified into one of nine categories with a severity from 1 (positive) to 5 (critical). Reviews at severity ≥ 3 become Airtable tasks; severity ≥ 4 additionally fire a Slack alert.

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Screenshots

End-to-end pipeline run

21 reviews processed in ~60 seconds. 7 tasks created, 4 real-time critical alerts.

Airtable — task board

Tasks sorted by severity, colored by category. This is what a store manager sees.

Airtable — Kanban view

Same data, grouped by category. Distribution of issues at a glance.

Slack — real-time critical alerts

Block Kit cards with action-first layout and direct link to the Airtable task.

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Tech stack

• Python 3.10+ — dataclasses, str | None union types, pathlib
• Anthropic Claude API — classification via tool use (claude-haiku-4-5)
• Airtable REST API — task tracker, called with raw requests
• Slack Incoming Webhooks — Block Kit for rich alert cards
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) — conversational interface via FastMCP
• Adapter pattern for review sources (Mock ships; Google Places stubbed)

Only three third-party deps: anthropic, requests, mcp. Everything else is standard library.

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Quick start

# 1. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/miguelpomarm/frontline-copilot
cd frontline-copilot
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 2. Configure secrets
cp .env.example .env
# ... edit .env with your keys (see setup section below)

# 3. Run the pipeline
python triage.py

# 4. Launch as an MCP server (optional)
python mcp_server.py

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Setup (one-time, ~10 minutes)

1. Anthropic API key

Get one at https://console.anthropic.com/. The free tier is enough for demo runs — 21 reviews cost ~$0.03.

2. Airtable base

Create a new base with a table named Tasks and these fields (exact names):

Field	Type
Review ID	Single line text (primary field)
Store	Single line text
Category	Single select — populate with the 9 taxonomy values
Severity	Number (integer)
Summary	Long text
Review Text	Long text
Author	Single line text
Date	Date
Status	Single select — Open, In Progress, Resolved

Then generate a personal access token at https://airtable.com/create/tokens with data.records:read and data.records:write scopes on your base. Copy the token and the base ID (starts with app..., found in the URL of your base).

3. Slack Incoming Webhook

Create a Slack app at https://api.slack.com/apps. Enable Incoming Webhooks, add a new webhook pointing to whichever channel should receive critical alerts, and copy the webhook URL.

4. Fill in .env

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
AIRTABLE_API_KEY=pat...
AIRTABLE_BASE_ID=app...
AIRTABLE_TABLE_NAME=Tasks
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=https://hooks.slack.com/services/...

5. First run

python triage.py --limit 3 --dry-run   # sanity check, no side effects
python triage.py --limit 3             # small live run
python triage.py                       # full 21 reviews

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MCP integration (Claude Desktop)

Add this to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) and restart Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "frontline-copilot": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/frontline-copilot/mcp_server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Then, inside Claude Desktop:

"How is Aurora Times Square doing right now?"

Claude will invoke get_store_health("times_square"), hit Airtable, and respond with the current snapshot — open tasks, critical count, top category.

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Design decisions

Deliberate choices worth calling out to a reviewer:

Closed taxonomy + Other bucket Categories are a fixed enum, not free-form. This guarantees consistent routing and metrics. Other is the escape hatch — reviewed periodically to expand the taxonomy based on real data instead of upfront guessing.

Tool use over prompt engineering Claude returns structured output via a tool schema with enum enforcement. This eliminates parsing bugs and prevents the LLM from hallucinating a category outside the taxonomy.

Haiku 4.5 as the default model For a well-scoped classification task, Haiku is fast (sub-second), cheap (~$0.001 per review), and accurate enough. In production this decision alone saves thousands of dollars/month at moderate volume.

Adapter pattern for review sources ReviewSource is an abstract interface. Ships with MockSource and a documented GooglePlacesSource stub. Swapping to Yelp, TrustPilot, or a proprietary feed is a new subclass — the rest of the pipeline is untouched.

Idempotency by review ID Reprocessing the same reviews doesn't create duplicate tasks. Airtable is checked before every create.

Severity thresholds as tunable constants ACTION_THRESHOLD and ALERT_THRESHOLD are module-level. Customers with different tolerances change two numbers, not code.

Sync over async for the MVP Processes 21 reviews sequentially in ~40s. The async variant is ~15 lines to swap (AsyncAnthropic + asyncio.gather with a semaphore for rate limits). For this volume, readability wins over speed.

Text over stars The prompt explicitly tells Claude to weigh the review text over the star rating. A 4-star review mentioning food safety is severity 5, not 2.

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Roadmap (not implemented)

• FastAPI webhook endpoint (POST /webhook/review) for real-time ingestion instead of batch runs.
• GooglePlacesSource — the adapter interface is done, live implementation is ~1 hour of API integration + retry logic.
• Rate-limit-aware async batching for high-volume production.
• End-to-end tests (Playwright / pytest with recorded API interactions) verifying the Airtable/Slack side effects.
• Per-customer configurable thresholds via config.yaml.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Built by Miguel Pomar Martínez as a technical portfolio piece.