Case Study · Independent · Automation Engineering

Jotia — Dropshipping Automation Platform

An end-to-end dropshipping machine: supplier discovery, deterministic pricing, AI content, auto-publishing, and an Arabic Messenger sales agent — built as 12 self-hosted n8n workflows and 4 Node.js microservices over PostgreSQL.

n8n (self-hosted)Node.js MicroservicesPostgreSQL PuppeteerAI ContentWooCommerce
case scorecard — structural factsarchived build
12
self-hosted n8n workflows
4
Node.js microservices
2
supplier platforms integrated via adapters
1
PostgreSQL database as single source of truth

Honest framing: the Jotia store itself is closed. This case is presented as a documented engineering build — the codebase and workflows are the evidence, and no business figures are claimed.

01The Business Problem

Dropshipping lives or dies on catalog velocity: find supplier products, price them with a margin that survives shipping and returns, produce listing content, publish, and answer buyers — for every product, continuously. Done by hand, each step is small; together they are a full-time job that caps how much catalog one person can run.

The goal: a platform where supplier catalogs flow to a published, sellable store with humans only approving — not executing.

02What I Built

Supplier Discovery Adapters

Stateless Puppeteer and REST adapters for two supplier platforms (Taager, Safka), each behind a unified contract: product details, variant availability, and links normalized into one schema regardless of source.

Deterministic Pricing Engine

Margin and pricing rules run in plain code — no AI near money. Supplier cost in, sellable price out, reproducibly, with the rules editable as configuration.

AI Content & Media Factory

Generated listing copy plus an image pipeline: original photo saved, background removed with rembg, and Arabic discount banners composed with Sharp using custom Arabic fonts — publish-ready media from raw supplier images.

Auto-Publishing + Arabic Sales Agent

Products published to the WooCommerce storefront automatically, and an Arabic-language Messenger sales agent answered buyers from the product knowledge — closing the loop from discovery to conversation.

03Engineering Decisions

Sheets to PostgreSQL, deliberately: the data layer was migrated from spreadsheets to a typed PostgreSQL schema — real numeric prices instead of text, categorization, and image references — with the migration intent documented in the schema itself.
Adapters with one contract: every supplier integration exposes the same interface, so adding a supplier means writing an adapter, not touching the pipeline.
Operational safety modes: scrapers ship with dryRun and test modes and environment-based credentials — production behavior is opt-in, not default.
Order-status feedback loop: a dedicated scraper reads order timelines from the supplier side and writes them back — fulfillment state visible without logging into supplier panels.

04Where It Fits

Jotia was the engineering proving ground for the ideas that later became the AI Commerce Operating System: adapters behind contracts, deterministic money paths, AI limited to language and media, and a database as the single source of truth. One of 10+ stores I have built and operated end to end — presented here for the build, not the business.

Supplier platforms
Taager · Safka
Puppeteer adapter
stateless · dryRun / test modes
REST adapter
variant discovery
one contract — product details, variants and links normalised into a single schema
Pricing engine
deterministic code · margin rules as config
Content factory
AI listing copy
Media factory
rembg · Sharp · Arabic discount banners
PostgreSQL
typed schema · single source of truth
WooCommerce storefront
auto-published
Arabic Messenger agent
answers from product knowledge
an order-status scraper reads fulfilment timelines from the supplier side and writes them back
DIAGRAM SLOT
Jotia pipeline — suppliers → pricing → content → storeassets/jotia-pipeline.png

05Skills Demonstrated

Workflow engineering (n8n)Node.js microservices Web scraping (Puppeteer)Adapter / contract design PostgreSQL schema designMedia-processing automation AI content pipelinesWooCommerce integration