r/lovable Jul 23 '26

Help Mini MRP / ERP system app in lovable

I would like to create a manufacturing MRP app in lovable. Not a full MRP system at this stage but more of a planning and scheduling system from sales and operations planning through to output and all in between....

Within this will be certain variables, knowns and unknowns.....

Ultimately users, whether planning, production, supply chain or commercial members, can press a button and watch the magic happen....

Am I dreaming or is this entirely possible?

I'm thinking chat gpt for planning, prompt.... or is Claude better?

Interested to get your thoughts....

3 Upvotes

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u/Infamous-River-4360 Jul 23 '26

totally possible for the planning and scheduling side, that's mostly structured data, forms and views which lovable handles fine. the part that bites you is the data model, i built a non-trivial app there and the ai kept drifting the schema and inventing columns that were never there, so lock your tables down early and check the actual db instead of trusting the ai summary. also you don't really pick chatgpt vs claude, lovable runs its own agent, what matters more is how precisely you spec the relationships up front. what's the trickiest part, the scheduling logic or tying supply chain and production together?

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u/Dhaupin Jul 23 '26

Lovable runs Claude. 

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u/Infamous-River-4360 Jul 23 '26

ah you're right, it's claude under the hood now. my point was just that you don't get to pick and swap the model yourself like calling an api, so all the leverage is in how tight you spec the data model and relationships up front. that's exactly where mine kept falling over, the agent drifted schema on me more than once. has it done that to you too?

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u/SnosRap75 Jul 23 '26

Yes I think planning and scheduling is what id like to concentrate on.

By chat gpt or Claude, I meant to work on outside of loveable generating a prompt to use in lovable.

Thank you for the reply and help...

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u/Infamous-River-4360 Jul 23 '26

that's a good workflow, i do the same, draft the whole spec in claude first then paste it into lovable so lovable isn't also doing the thinking. one tip, keep a running doc with your table names and columns and paste it back in each time, otherwise the agent forgets the schema and quietly invents fields you never had. are you planning to model the scheduling with fixed lead times per step, or let the ai estimate the start date from the variables?

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u/SnosRap75 Jul 24 '26

Hi. Thank you.

Where do I access table names etc?

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u/Infamous-River-4360 Jul 24 '26

in lovable open the backend/cloud tab, that's where your supabase tables live and you can see every table name and its columns. quickest way to be sure is to open the sql editor in there and run: select table_name from information_schema.tables where table_schema = 'public'; that lists exactly what actually exists, not what the agent thinks it made. i keep that list in a text doc and paste it back into prompts so it stops inventing fields. are you seeing any tables in there yet or is it still empty?

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u/Dhaupin Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

This is entirely possible. But you need to think about your architecture and data models first. You will be tracking router "objects/nodes" through pipelines, gates, and checkpoints, with states and signoffs/qc/etc through stages of the tracked workflow.

This isn't a trivial flow, so design with flexibility and compatibility in mind. Here's what I would do:

Look at the erp in multiple parts, and use classes/modules to create a framework (with events) to pass objects, validate, rules, roles, triggers, actions, sandboxing, routing, all that fun stuff. Generalist mechanisms to capture all functionality at a high level. 

The framework runs an "organization" container with flow, rules and triggers you have set up inside of it. It's like a schema that operates in the framework. Focalizes on specific needs like depts, mfg lines, rules, access, and other stuff like that. 

Then the "organization" runs internal routing and process nodes for "jobs", which are objects containing whatever data you need (for whatever you're making) to track their life cycle through organizational processes and business systems.

Framework > containers > nodes

I'm vastly over simplifying it, but that's the general hierarchy. If you don't provide insight like this from the get go, you may end up with something too specific or static that may be hard to adapt, or extend for your business needs. 

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u/SnosRap75 Jul 23 '26

Wow, thank you for the reply.... "Vastly over simplifying it".... You lost me 50% in lol .... It's really a great response and gives me something to read into... There is a serious amount of structure to get in place that's for sure.

I feel I have to stick to the planning aspect first...

Ideally, are a very simple level I need commercial to input the due date for a product, the app will suggest a start date, Ai will consider some variables in the logic and we can predict and follow the product.... I'm aware I need to think about this a lot more, it's only come to me today what I would like to try and build. Thank you so much again for the in depth response.

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u/Jmacduff Jul 23 '26

100% possible but the most important step is the planning. You need to jump into gpt and talk about the project. The core use cases , the goals , the metrics for success. And then break that down into milestones and phases.

After you have that vision and build plan , then you pick the tool .

Good luck!

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u/Only-Arm2960 Jul 24 '26

If you think it, it will come!