How Sugar Nails came together, step by step, from the first booking chat to launch. Tools: Qwen3-8B fine-tuned with LoRA on Tinker, Kokoro for the demo voice-over, FastAPI, Vercel. Code: https://github.com/comzzy/sugar-frontdesk
First version: a booking chat that asks for name, number, service, style, colours, length, shape, allergies and time, shows the total in naira and takes payment, plus a PIN-protected queue where Sugar taps Start and Done.
Commits: 3785289
Trained the front desk on Tinker: Qwen3-8B with LoRA on 360 practice chats in Sugar's voice, 108 steps in under 5 minutes for about $1.65. Exact orders went from 22.5% to 95% on held-out chats.
Commits: 3785289 702d683
The site now gets its replies from the fine-tuned model through Tinker, with a simple rule-based backup if a reply is slow or broken, and the queue is saved so everyone sees the same list.
Commits: c18f103 81baf1e
Put it live on Vercel and ran a full booking on the live site, from the chat to payment to Sugar's queue.
Commits: b7054f4 9b8df08
Sugar can clear practice bookings from her queue with her PIN, and the full live run passed again with the fine-tuned model answering.
Commits: e3fa747 36cbe94
Rewrote the README around Sugar's real day: her hands are full, her phone keeps buzzing, and walk-ins don't know who's next.
Commits: 1bc56f3
Sugar's studio is in GRA, Port Harcourt, so the site says that everywhere and the front desk answers "where una dey?" with the right address.
Commits: 1bc56f3 48b2200
Checked every claim in the post against the logs, measured the real running cost (about ₦0.31 per reply, ₦2.80 per booking), and Sugar can now remove a single booking from her queue.
Commits: 8b692a5
Made a narrated demo video of a full booking, with a Kokoro voice-over run on my own machine and small subtitles.
Commits: 61fe19e ccf70fd
Made the checkout look like a normal payment step, Pay, then success, and re-recorded the video and screenshots.
Commits: ed48c89
Sent Sugar the link on WhatsApp. She opened the chat and started booking herself, and her reply went into the post.
Commits: ed48c89
Re-recorded the phone demo and finished the write-up for launch.
Commits: 5052080
