Booking & CRM for beauty salons, with an AI assistant
Slotly
Role: Full-stack developer — product, frontend, AI & backend · Period: 2024 · Client: Own product · Platforms: Web, Mobile web
Online booking, an AI booking assistant, a staff mobile app and a CRM for beauty salons — all on one real-time data layer. Book on the client site and watch the appointment land in the stylist's app instantly.
Salons lose clients to phone tag and messy schedules. Slotly gives the client a 4-step online booking with real free slots, the stylist a mobile app with today's schedule and instant new-booking alerts, and the owner a CRM with a per-specialist calendar, client history and analytics.
The AI assistant lets clients book in one sentence — "haircut with Anna on Friday after 5pm" or "маникюр завтра утром". Gemini extracts the service, specialist, day and time window, and the app matches it against real availability; if that day is closed or full, it suggests the nearest options. The demo is a private sandbox for every visitor, pre-filled with a believable fictional salon.
Key features
- Client site with services, team and 4-step booking on real availability
- AI booking assistant in English and Russian (Gemini), with a keyword fallback
- Staff mobile app: daily schedule, check-in / done / no-show, new-booking alerts
- CRM calendar per specialist with appointment details and status changes
- Analytics: bookings, revenue, average check, no-show rate, utilization, top services, booking channels
- Client base with lifetime value and visit history; services on/off for online booking
- Real-time sync between views and browser tabs
What I did
- Designed the product and built it end-to-end with Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19 and TypeScript
- Wrote the availability engine: working days, service durations, overlaps and 'any specialist' matching
- Built a server-side AI route with model fallback and a bilingual rule-based fallback
- Implemented a real-time sandbox data layer with localStorage and BroadcastChannel
- Built analytics charts and the calendar grid without chart libraries
Results
- Client → staff → CRM updates in real time
- Book in one sentence in two languages
- $0 running cost on free tiers
Tech stack
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Gemini API
- Route Handlers
- BroadcastChannel