MERLIN STUDIO
VENTURE DOSSIER

Scaffolds

Product structure, made workable

Scaffolds holds the structure of a digital product, its pages, audiences and journeys, as one working model that people and AI tools can both read and edit. It exists because product thinking kept drifting apart across scattered documents.

DOSSIER

  1. 01The opportunity
  2. 02The partnership
  3. 03The product
  4. 04Product decisions
  5. 05How it is built
  6. 06Evidence and progress
01 · THE OPPORTUNITY

Repeated, first-hand exposure to the same workflow problem across many engagements. Website plans lived in a sitemap tool, wireframes in another, journeys in a slide, and the reasoning in somebody's notes. The plan died at handover. Scaffolds began as the fix Merlin needed for its own consulting work on large website programmes.

02 · THE PARTNERSHIP

Scaffolds is the Merlin-originated venture. Merlin met the problem first-hand, built the product, and now runs it as a business. It is also the clearest view of what working with Merlin long term looks like: the person who plans with you ships the product, then keeps shipping it.

  • 01Conceived inside real consulting engagements
  • 02Designed, built and operated by Merlin
  • 03Plans this website: the dossier you are reading was built against it
03 · THE PRODUCT

Live at scaffolds.design. One model of a product's structure and the reasoning behind it: pages, blocks, journeys, rules and decisions. The AI your organisation already uses connects to it and reads the plan instead of guessing at it.

Visit scaffolds.design
The Scaffolds architecture canvas showing a site's pages as stacked block cards
The whole site on one canvas. Colour is audience intent, not layout role.

One model, four views

Architecture, wireframes, journeys and reasoning are lenses over the same document. A change in one is a change in all.

See the product

Work with your AI, not ours

There is no model inside Scaffolds. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or your editor connects in and reads the plan where it lives.

How it works

The round trip

A connected AI can ask a question or send a proposal. A person reviews and applies: one revision, one undo away.

The loop

Review without accounts

A client opens a link and reads the work: comments, pinned notes, history. No design tool to learn.

For programmes

A real scaffold, in public

The plan for scaffolds.design is itself a public project. Open it and read the reasoning behind every section.

Open the example

Priced on how much you plan

Every surface and the AI connection are free on one project. A second project is the honest moment to pay.

See pricing
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CAPTURED FROM THE LIVE PRODUCT

A page opened in Scaffolds with purpose and reasoning attached to each block
Reasoning sits with the section it is about.
A user journey drawn as an explicit route across pages in Scaffolds
A journey is an explicit route across real pages.
The same Scaffolds project rendered as a phone-first hierarchy
On a phone the model becomes a projection, not a shrunken canvas.
The scaffolds.design homepage: your AI builds it, Scaffolds is what remembers why
The sales site. Plan once, build with any AI.
04 · PRODUCT DECISIONS
01

Agents propose. People decide.

A connected AI cannot write to a project. There is no write method behind the endpoint at all, which is a different kind of promise from a permission setting. The most it can send back is a question or a proposal, and both wait for a person.

See the promise on the live site
02

Absent means unchanged

A proposal is one edited file, scoped to one domain. A missing field keeps its value, so a careless edit cannot wipe a warning. Review counts removals separately, because deletions deserve more suspicion than additions.

The import rules
03

Honesty as an interface

A capability that is not enforced is listed as free rather than sold as a gate. Prices on the page are derived from the billing code, so the site cannot quote a number your statement will not show. Nothing is deleted when you stop paying.

Read the pricing page
04

Reviewers are not users to convert

Projects are private by default, readable by link, and editable only by invitation. A stakeholder reviews from a train, on a phone, without an account. The mobile app is a projection of the model, not a shrunken canvas.

See both views
05 · HOW IT IS BUILT
  • Next.js 16
  • React 19
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind 4
  • Netlify
  • Firestore
  • Postgres + Drizzle
  • MCP + OAuth 2.0
  • Stripe
  • PWA

A stateless MCP server

Every project is its own endpoint, answered by a fresh server per request. OAuth is built in: an AI client registers itself, the person approves in a consent screen, and the token is scoped to that one project.

Three backends, one interface

Firestore in production, Postgres or plain files elsewhere, behind one storage facade. Every save is revision-checked, so concurrent editing cannot silently clobber a decision.

Screenshots that cannot rot

Over 700 automated tests, plus a script that regenerates the marketing screenshots from the live product. What the sales site shows is what the product does.

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06 · EVIDENCE AND PROGRESS

Live and available to purchase today: free for one project, $29 a month for Pro, enterprise by agreement. In daily use on real product engagements. The clearest proof is circular: the plan for this website is a Scaffolds project, and the plan for scaffolds.design is public inside the product.

Have a comparable opportunity?

If repeated exposure to a problem has shown you where a business could exist, work it through with the evaluator.

Start a venture