Backpack
One platform to run the agency. Start here.
Backpack is the operating platform for the agency. One console, every client, every capability: websites, content, analytics, inboxes, email, social, money, and tasks. The goal, in the owner’s words: manage everything “without having to go to 50 sites.”
These docs are the source of truth for architecture, decisions, and operating playbooks. They are written for two audiences with equal weight:
- People joining or running a project.
- Agents (Claude, Codex, and sub-agents) doing the work. Every playbook is written so an agent can execute it end to end without asking for context it could have read here.
The one-paragraph architecture
The console at sites.backpackops.com is a thin control plane. Client websites are static exports hosted free on Vercel, with content stored as structured data in each site’s own GitHub repo. Feature-rich capabilities (support inbox, email campaigns, social scheduling) are whole open-source platforms running as separate deployments, one instance per client where isolation matters, linked into the console’s module nav. Nothing gets bundled into the console repo. Agents drive everything through APIs.
Reading order
- Architecture for the full picture
- Conventions before doing any work, agent or human
- Decisions for why things are the way they are
- Playbooks when doing a concrete task
- Systems for reference on each moving part
- Status for the current state of the fleet and open items
Hard rules
- No secrets in this repo, ever. Reference environment variable names, never values.
- No em dashes in any user-facing copy, and nothing that sounds AI-generated. Site content, console UI text, emails, and these docs all follow the same voice rule.
- Verify before claiming live. Every change gets checked against production before it is reported as done.
- Finished work ends with the live link.