# 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](https://huggingface.co/spaces/build-small-hackathon/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.*