Try the demo

There is a running instance you can use. It is in Demo Mode: every step is real except the last one, so nothing is produced, shipped or charged.

It is two separate apps, which is the whole idea of Pressline:

• The designer — a sample Engine. It makes the image. In your own setup this is your app, and Pressline never sees how it works.
• The shop — Pressline itself. It turns a design into a product you can buy.

Walk through it

1. Open the designer, type some text, pick a shape and colors, and press Finalize. Behind that button the Engine stores your design, renders a preview, asks the shop what it sells, and pre-renders a print file for every product and size that fits the design’s shape.
2. Press Order a print. You land on the shop, on a page that belongs to your design: the product, the sizes and colors, a shipping destination, and a price that includes shipping and tax.
3. Pay with Stripe’s test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry, any three digits. No real card is accepted and no money moves.
4. You get a thank-you page, a tracking link and an email. Follow the link to watch the order’s state.

What is real and what is not

Real: the design, the print file and its validation, the product data and prices from Printful, the shipping quote, the Stripe checkout in test mode, the print order placed at Printful, and the emails.

Not real: the last step. Printful creates the order for real, checks the address and prices it, and then Pressline cancels it exactly where it would normally confirm. The order reaches submitted and immediately canceled, and the thank-you page, the status page and the email all say so. Nothing is printed and nothing ships.

Watch the machinery

Demo Mode also opens the Operator View, which normally needs a token. It is read-only, and it is the most interesting part to look at after you order:

• Orders — every order, and inside one, its full history: each state change, what caused it (the storefront, a Stripe webhook, a Printful webhook, the CLI, or the nightly reconciliation), every webhook received, and every email sent.

That history is the point of Pressline. Webhooks are treated as hints rather than facts: each one is recorded, then the truth is re-fetched from the provider before the order moves, and a nightly pass repairs anything a missed webhook left behind.

Then

Read the Operator guide to run your own instance, or the Engine developer guide to connect your own app to one.