blog-post.md

CraftPilot: Building a Multi-Agent Craft Business Assistant with a Single Small Model

How I built a tool for someone I know — a creative introvert who makes beautiful crafts but struggles to sell them.

The Problem

I know someone who crochets, embroiders, paints, and sews the most beautiful things. Friends and family constantly tell her: "You should sell these!" But she never does. Not because the work isn't good enough — it's because the selling part is overwhelming.

Writing product descriptions? Agonizing. Picking a fair price? Impossible. Crafting Instagram captions? Exhausting for an introvert. So the crafts pile up, gifted away or tucked into drawers, while she moves on to the next project.

I built CraftPilot to fix that.

The Solution

CraftPilot is a photo-in, listing-out tool. Upload a photo of your handmade craft, and you get:

• Catalog metadata — category, materials, colors, complexity, searchable tags
• Product copy — a title, short description, full description, and 3 Instagram captions
• Fair pricing — a price range based on material cost, labor time, and market rates
• Downloadable listing — export everything as an Etsy/Instagram-ready text file
• Agent traces — full transparency into what each AI agent did

The key constraint: everything runs on a single model (MiniCPM-V 2.6, ~8B parameters) via llama.cpp. No cloud APIs. No subscriptions. No sending your craft photos to OpenAI.

How It Works: The Multi-Agent Pipeline

CraftPilot uses a 4-agent pipeline, all powered by the same model:

Photo -> [Vision Agent] -> [Cataloger Agent] -> [Copywriter Agent]
                                              -> [Pricer Agent]

1. Vision Agent — Takes the photo and produces a detailed text description of the craft item (materials, colors, techniques, style)
2. Cataloger Agent — Reads the description and outputs structured metadata as JSON (category, materials, tags, complexity)
3. Copywriter Agent — Takes the catalog data and writes warm, authentic product copy and Instagram captions
4. Pricer Agent — Considers materials cost, labor hours, complexity, and market rates to suggest a fair price range

Each agent has a specialized system prompt and outputs structured JSON via constrained generation. The pipeline streams results — you see the vision analysis appear first, then catalog data fills in, then copy and pricing.

The Technical Story

One Model, Four Agents

MiniCPM-V 2.6 is a multimodal model from OpenBMB that handles both vision (image understanding) and text generation. Running it via llama.cpp means:

• No GPU required (works on CPU)
• No API costs
• Full privacy — your photos never leave your machine

Why Not Just Use ChatGPT?

Fair question. Here's the difference:

• No account or subscription needed — privacy matters when selling your own work
• Structured, repeatable outputs — same format every time, not a wall of text
• Purpose-built workflow — pricing considers actual material costs and labor hours
• One-click export — download a ready-to-paste listing for Etsy or Instagram

What I Learned About Small Models

A small model is surprisingly capable when you give it:

• Clear, focused system prompts (one job per agent)
• Structured output constraints (JSON schema)
• Pre-computed math (the model can't reliably add, so the pricing template does the arithmetic)

Where it struggles: complex reasoning, nuanced pricing logic, and occasionally inconsistent JSON. Error recovery in the pipeline handles this gracefully — if one agent fails, you still get results from the others.

The Stack

• Model: MiniCPM-V 2.6 (~8B) via llama-cpp-python
• UI: Gradio 6.x with custom CSS
• Orchestration: Python async pipeline with Pydantic models
• Hosting: Hugging Face Spaces (CPU)

What's Next

• Better pricing with real market data integration
• Batch processing for multiple items at once
• Support for more craft types and regional pricing

Try It

CraftPilot is live on Hugging Face Spaces: Try CraftPilot

Built for the Build Small Hackathon 2026 — Backyard AI track. Single model, no cloud APIs, full agent transparency.

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Built with love for someone who deserves to share her craft with the world.