Revolutionizing Second-Hand Book Reservations in BrusselsRevolutionizing Second-Hand Book Reservations in Brussels
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Lisa Demchenko
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Hey! This is Tulibris, my submission — a reservation platform for a real Brussels bookshop where every book is a unique second-hand copy (There is no real collaboration for this project yet).
The problem
Tulibris is a second-hand English bookshop in Brussels where almost every book is a single, unique copy. That scarcity is the whole appeal — and the whole problem. When several people want the same book, there's exactly one, and the only fair way to decide who gets it or to tell the others when it frees up is to manually track the messages.
How it runs today
Discovery happens on Instagram, where the owner posts individual books to a devoted following. Interested buyers reserve by sliding into the DMs. The owner keeps each book's queue in his head, replies to everyone by hand, holds the book, and chases pickup — all while the shop is open just a few days a week. As posting volume grows, the whole thing buckles.
The solution
A platform that moves reservations online:
https://tulibris-reserve-now.base44.app/
-> Claim + fair queue. Buyers browse the catalogue and claim a book themselves. If it's already taken, they join a first-come queue that advances automatically the moment a hold lapses — no owner intervention.
-> Cart. Reserve several books at once as a single basket.
-> Concierge. A conversational assistant that does it all for you — "reserve The Sea, The Sea," "add these three to my cart," "what am I holding?" — and pushes a notification when a held book is cancelled or a queued one frees up.
-> Email notifications when the book is reserved, when the reservation is cancelled and when the pick up deadline is near.
Owner back office.
https://tulibris-reserve-now.base44.app/admin
Catalogue stock in seconds (scan an ISBN or bulk-import), see every hold and queue at a glance, and clear a counter sale in one tap.
Instagram stays the shop window it already is.
Why it's helpful
It removes the manual follow-up that doesn't scale and replaces a queue-in-someone's-head with a fair, automatic one. A single source of truth across online and in-store kills the double-sell problem. Cataloguing becomes fast enough to actually keep current, and buyers get a low-friction, almost conversational way to grab a book before someone else does — small-shop charm with big-shop reliability.
How it was built
The approach was deliberately spec-first — AI-augmented at every step, but human-directed.
Analysed the business process. Mapped how Tulibris runs today — Instagram discovery, DM reservations, a queue kept in the owner's head and manual pickup chasing.
Thought it through with Claude. Used Claude as a thinking partner to pressure-test the concept and surface edge cases.
Gathered design inspiration. Pulled references (Mobbin, Awwwards) for a warm, editorial paper aesthetic, then translated them into a Tulibris-specific direction.
Wrote a PRD. Turned the thinking into a proper spec — problem, users, the claim-and-queue model, requirements, data model, notifications, passwordless identity, the buyer concierge, and design direction — so the build had one clear source of truth.
Built it in Base44. Fed the PRD into Base44 to turn the spec into a working web app: catalogue, queue, cart, concierge, and owner back office.
Music generated in Suno.
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