Introduction
Hello from Japan! 🇯🇵
This article was originally published in Japanese on Qiita and has been translated and adapted for DEV Community.
I currently work as a logistics driver while teaching myself web application development, mainly with Python.
I have been building personal projects around problems I have encountered in real workplaces and tools that made me think:
It would be useful if something like this existed.
The two main applications I currently have publicly available are:
- A bakery sales management system
- Puoppo, a news summarization and analysis application powered by official RSS feeds and AI
At first, I developed these as two completely separate applications.
However, when I placed both services side by side in a single image, I realized that they were actually moving in the same direction.
This article records why I built these two applications and the broader product vision that emerged from connecting them conceptually.
The Two AI Applications I Built
1. Bakery Sales Management System
The bakery sales management system is a web application for recording daily sales data and reviewing sales totals and product rankings.
Its main features include:
- Product registration
- Daily sales entry
- Sales aggregation by product
- Sales rankings
- Chart-based visualization
- AI-generated suggestions for improving sales
Why I Built It
A store produces many numbers every day.
However, recording numbers alone does not automatically lead to better decisions.
Store operators still need to answer questions such as:
- Which products are actually selling?
- Which products are losing sales?
- What should be changed to improve revenue?
- Is there room to improve the product lineup or sales method?
I therefore wanted to build more than a simple sales-recording tool.
My goal was:
To transform sales data into practical improvement ideas that can be used in the workplace.
Technology Stack
- Python
- Flask
- PostgreSQL
- Gemini API
- Docker
- pytest
- GitHub Actions
- Render
I have also introduced testing and CI/CD.
The project is no longer focused only on adding features. I am also building a development environment where I can continue improving the application safely.
2. News Summarization and Analysis App: Puoppo
Puoppo is a web application that retrieves news from official RSS feeds and uses AI to summarize and analyze it.
Its main features include:
- Retrieving news from official RSS feeds
- Keyword search
- News article summarization
- Comparison of multiple news stories
- Reducing the time required to collect information
Why I Built It
A huge amount of information is published on the internet every day.
However, finding the information you need, reading articles one by one, and organizing their contents takes a great deal of time.
When information gathering must be done alongside work or study, reading every article is not realistic.
I therefore developed Puoppo as:
A system that collects relevant news and helps users understand it in a short amount of time.
Puoppo uses reliable official RSS feeds as its information sources and applies AI to summarize and analyze the retrieved news.
The goal is not merely to display a list of headlines.
It is to reduce the time users need to understand the information and make their own decisions.
What I Realized After Placing the Two Apps Side by Side
I recently placed the bakery sales management system and Puoppo together in a single promotional image.
Seeing them side by side made the role of each application much clearer.
Bakery Sales Management System
An application for understanding data generated inside the store.
It handles internal information such as:
- Sales
- Products
- Rankings
- Daily records
Puoppo
An application for understanding information generated outside the store.
It handles external information such as:
- News
- Industry trends
- Regulatory changes
- Economic information
The relationship can be summarized like this:
| Application | Information Handled | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Bakery sales management system | Internal store sales data | Understanding the current situation and identifying improvements |
| Puoppo | External news and publicly available information | Information gathering and situational awareness |
Until then, I had thought of them as separate personal projects.
However, they ultimately share the same purpose:
Collect data and information, organize it with AI, and connect it to the next action.
Connecting “Inside the Store” with “Outside the Store”
A store cannot fully understand its situation by looking only at its own sales data.
Many external factors can affect sales.
For a bakery, these could include:
- The prices of flour, butter, and other ingredients
- Weather
- Local events
- Seasons and temperature
- Food industry trends
- New competing stores
- Subsidies or regulatory changes
- Consumer cost-saving behavior
Combining this external information with a store’s internal sales data could support more specific decisions.
For example, a future system might make suggestions such as:
News about rising wheat prices has increased.
Consider reviewing the pricing of products with high ingredient costs.Tomorrow has a high chance of rain, so customer traffic may decrease.
Consider adjusting production volume to reduce waste.A local event is scheduled nearby.
Consider preparing more products that are easy to carry away.
By combining:
- Internal business data
- External news
- Weather and local information
- AI-powered analysis
the system could develop beyond simple sales management and begin supporting business decisions.
The SalesInsight AI Concept
The bakery sales management system originally began under the project name sales_data_app.
As development continued, I started to see the possibility of applying its basic structure to more industries than bakeries.
For example:
- Izakaya restaurants
- Teppanyaki restaurants
- Okonomiyaki restaurants
- Fish markets
- Greengrocers
- Retail stores
- Restaurants
The core system could potentially be adapted by changing product data, terminology, and screen layouts for each industry.
I am therefore considering the following future project name:
SalesInsight AI
SalesInsight AI would analyze sales data for different types of businesses and provide improvement suggestions that can be acted on in real workplaces.
If it could also connect with Puoppo’s information-gathering features, it might develop into a broader business-support platform that:
Turns workplace numbers and changes in the outside world into the next practical action through AI.
Why I Connect GitHub and Qiita
I publish not only completed applications, but also the development process through GitHub and Qiita.
On GitHub, I record:
- Source code
- Changes
- Commit history
- The current state of each project
On Qiita, I record:
- Problems encountered during implementation
- Investigation steps
- Mistakes
- Fixes
- Lessons learned
Topics I have written about include:
- Building Docker environments
- Multi-stage Docker builds
- Secure API key management
- Introducing pytest
- CI with GitHub Actions
- Near-misses involving Git operations
- Removing unnecessary code and dependencies
- Investigating errors in the development environment
These details are not visible from completed screenshots alone.
However, during real development, I have found that the following questions are often more important than the finished feature:
- Why did the error occur?
- How was the cause isolated?
- What was changed to prevent the same incident?
- Why was a particular technology selected?
I therefore use GitHub as a record of the deliverable and Qiita as a record of the problem-solving process.
Personal Projects Become a Line, Not Just Separate Points
When I first started personal development, I was focused only on completing one application.
However, as I continued learning and building multiple applications, the experiences from each project began to connect.
Through the bakery sales management system, I learned about:
- Data entry
- Aggregation
- Analysis
- AI-generated recommendations
Through Puoppo, I learned about:
- Retrieving external information
- RSS
- Search
- Summarization
- AI analysis
The technologies and ideas learned in one application can be reused in another.
Creating an image that placed the two apps side by side made me realize:
The things I have built were not unrelated products. They were intermediate steps toward the same broader concept.
Each personal project may look like a small, separate point.
But when projects are accumulated with a purpose, those points begin to form a line—and eventually a larger service vision.
This Is Still Only a Concept
SalesInsight AI and its potential integration with Puoppo are currently future ideas.
The two existing applications still operate independently.
I do not want to present features that have not been implemented as if they were already complete.
However, I believe personal development is also about recording:
When an idea emerged and what I was thinking at that point.
The concept may change in the future.
Some parts may prove technically difficult.
Even so, recording the direction I can currently see will allow me to look back later and understand how the project evolved.
What I Want to Work on Next
While continuing to improve the stability of the existing applications, I would like to explore:
- Industry-specific interfaces and product management
- User authentication
- Per-user data management
- Saved analysis history
- Improved AI recommendations
- Integration with external news
- Weather and local-information integration
- Better smartphone usability
- Broader test coverage
- Stronger security and operational safeguards
I do not plan to implement everything at once.
I want to proceed through small experiments while avoiding damage to features that already work.
Conclusion
Placing the bakery sales management system and Puoppo together in one image revealed the common purpose behind the two personal projects.
The bakery sales management system handles information from inside the store.
Puoppo handles information from outside the store.
Connecting the two created the following vision:
Analyze internal business numbers together with external information and use AI to support the next practical action in the workplace.
At the moment, they are still two independent applications.
However, by continuing personal development and recording the process on GitHub and Qiita, I hope to gradually turn this concept into something real.
Rather than explaining the completed future only after it exists, I want to record the moment when the idea first emerged.
This article is one part of that development record.
Related Links
GitHub
Bakery Sales Management System
https://github.com/tosane932/sales_data_app
Puoppo
https://github.com/tosane932/puoppo_app
Live Demos
Bakery Sales Management System — Render Demo
https://bakery-salesdata.onrender.com/
Puoppo — Render Demo
Qiita
My Qiita Profile
Bakery Sales Management System Articles
https://qiita.com/tosane932/items/245152c844261e615641
https://qiita.com/tosane932/items/02de476fad8f0c1261e0
https://qiita.com/tosane932/items/7a15e942745545a37b6a
https://qiita.com/tosane932/items/31bdab8ee2ab8bae2c50
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