Open Questions

Purpose

Remaining decisions and questions that need answers before or during implementation. Organised by topic area. See 07 - Technical Requirements for decisions already made.

Business & Scope

#	Question	Options / Notes
1	Primary equipment types — which sectors will be supported first?	Audio, lighting, video, staging, rigging, power, furniture, décor — prioritise for MVP
2	Target company size — small (1-5 people) or larger (20+)?	✅ Answered: Small to medium companies wanting to share resources. Both scales should be possible
3	Pricing model — how will EventKit itself be offered?	Open source, freemium, paid self-hosted licence, or SaaS alongside self-hosted?
4	MVP scope — which module to build first?	Inventory + Scanning → Planning → CRM → Federation is a natural order
5	Data migration — what systems are companies migrating from?	✅ Answered: Nice-to-have future feature. Import tooling not a priority for MVP

Technical

#	Question	Options / Notes
6	Tech stack — backend language and framework?	✅ Decided: Go with ConnectRPC
7	~~Frontend framework~~	✅ Decided: React with @tanstack/router + @tanstack/query. Mobile: React Native / Expo (planned, not priority)
8	~~Database~~	✅ Decided: PostgreSQL 15+
9	Search engine	Built-in DB search, or dedicated (Meilisearch, Typesense) for large catalogues?
10	File storage	Local filesystem, S3-compatible, or both?
11	Real-time updates	gRPC server-streaming (via ConnectRPC) is the natural choice. SSE fallback for browsers?
12	Background jobs	Go goroutines + internal queue, or external (Redis, NATS)?

Federation

#	Question	Options / Notes
13	Discovery — how do companies find each other?	✅ Answered: Manual URL exchange between companies
14	~~Protocol format~~	✅ Decided: gRPC via ConnectRPC with Protobuf service definitions
15	Pricing in federation — should sub-hire rates be shared automatically?	✅ Answered: Prices negotiated per-transaction — out-of-band negotiation, system tracks equipment movement
16	Asset ownership transfer — can an asset be permanently sold to another instance?	✅ Answered: Yes — permanent ownership transfer is supported
17	Federation versioning — how to handle protocol upgrades?	Protobuf's built-in backward compatibility helps here
18	Dispute resolution — what happens if companies disagree about asset condition?	Photo evidence at dispatch/return, timestamped condition logs

Scanning & Hardware

#	Question	Options / Notes
19	Primary scanning device — phone cameras or dedicated scanners?	Phones (lower cost) vs. Bluetooth scanners (faster) vs. both
20	Label printer — should EventKit support direct printing?	Or generate PDFs and let users print on any printer?
21	Existing barcodes — do companies already have asset labels?	✅ Answered: Yes, support legacy barcode import/mapping if possible
22	Offline requirements — how often will users be offline?	✅ Answered: Nice-to-have, not a hard requirement

CRM

#	Question	Options / Notes
23	Invoicing depth — full invoicing or integration with existing accounting?	✅ Answered: Integrated accounting features are the priority. Xero/QuickBooks integration is optional/secondary. Invoices, payments, and purchases all in-app
24	Accounting integrations — which platforms?	✅ Answered: Xero and QuickBooks — optional, not priority. Integrated features come first
25	Email integration — built-in email or link to external?	IMAP/SMTP integration vs. Gmail/Outlook API vs. just logging
26	Marketing features — email campaigns needed?	Or leave marketing to dedicated tools (Mailchimp, etc.)?

Planning

#	Question	Options / Notes
27	Crew management depth — basic assignment or full scheduling?	✅ Answered: Crew members login and confirm availability. Basic scheduling with crew portal
28	Transport planning — basic or advanced?	Basic: assign vehicles. Advanced: route optimisation, weight distribution
29	Venue database — shared across instances?	Could be a federated feature — shared venue specs across the network
30	Calendar integration — which platforms?	Google Calendar, Outlook/Exchange, CalDAV — for crew and event sync

Priority Matrix

Suggested priority for answering these questions:

Priority	Questions	Reason
✅ Answered	2, 5-8, 13-16, 21-24, 27	See strikethrough items above
🔴 Must answer before starting	1, 4	Scope (which equipment sectors first, MVP order)
🟡 Answer during early development	3, 9-11, 19	Affects architecture but can be deferred slightly
🟢 Answer before beta	12, 17-18, 20, 25-26, 28-30	Important but not blocking initial development

00 - System Overview — High-level system overview
01 - Inventory Management — Inventory module design
02 - Planning Module — Planning module design
03 - CRM Module — CRM module design
04 - Federation Architecture — Federation protocol design
05 - Barcode and QR Scanning — Scanning and hardware
06 - Module Integration — Cross-module workflows
07 - Technical Requirements — Technical decisions made and remaining
09 - Discovery Questions — Original discovery questionnaire with answers

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