Solving a booking frustration I'd had for ten years.
Booking software for independent hair salons, built after years of fighting my own barber's clunky booking system, now piloting with a real salon.
Ten years of the same annoyance.
My barber's booking system has never been easy: an account to create, a login that sometimes fails, too many steps to find an open slot. For a business that's fundamentally simple (a person, a chair, a time slot), the software made it feel complicated. AI prototyping tools made it possible to test a better version myself, real enough to actually show him.
Willow & Fern: a live demo salon
10 services, 3 stylists, one location. This is the part of Folio Studio you can actually click through yourself, with no salon credentials needed.
No account required.
The core decision: remove the biggest friction entirely. Customers book in under a minute, no account or password. On the salon side, stylists get their own schedules and the salon keeps a simple customer record.
Online booking
Customers book in under a minute, with no account required.
Staff schedules
Per-stylist hours, time off, and service assignments.
Customer management
Keep contact details, visit history, and notes in one place.
A real pilot, real feedback.
Piloting with one real salon opening in fall 2026, a non-paying pilot with the salon's actual feedback shaping the design before anything wider.
Planned and built entirely with AI tools.
Claude for planning, Replit for the earliest build, Lovable for the current one; Supabase for the database, GitHub for version control. The tool chain shifted as the project matured.
- Claude
- Replit (early build)
- Lovable (current build)
- Supabase
- GitHub
From personal annoyance to a real pilot.
A small-scale example of a pattern I trust: notice a real problem, prototype fast enough to test against reality, and let genuine feedback shape what's next.