Glossary
Everything you’ll see in ThreadCloud, translated into plain English. Bookmark this page.
Core concepts
Order
A buying order. One supplier, one season, one delivery window. In ThreadCloud’s database this is sometimes still called a “Season” — that’s a leftover name. In the UI and in conversation, always say “order”.
Buying Season
A group of orders for one selling period — e.g. “Pre-Fall 2025” might contain 14 orders from 14 brands. You set up the buying season once at the top of the year and assign orders to it.
Style
One product within an order. A blazer in Navy is one style. The same blazer in Brown is a second style. Each style has variants (sizes).
Variant
One size of one style. A Navy blazer in size 50 is one variant.
SKU
The unique code for one variant. Format is usually STYLE-COLOR-SIZE, e.g. BLZR42-NVY-50. ThreadCloud generates these automatically.
Vendor Ref
The supplier’s internal style code (the one printed on the linesheet). Stored as tc_trade.supplier_ref on the Shopify product. Never confuse this with SKU.
Workflow stages
Parse
The first step of Build Order. AI reads the supplier PDF/Excel and extracts every style into a grid.
Enrich
The second step. AI fills in descriptions, fit notes, fabric content, country of origin, occasion, and all the other Shopify metafields.
Push to Shopify
Writes the products to your Shopify store. Once pushed, they’re live on the storefront (assuming the product status is Active).
Receive
When the physical shipment arrives, you mark each variant’s received quantity, the FX rate locks, and you print labels.
Reorder
A targeted re-buy of styles that are selling well. Pulls from sell-through data and lets you pick which variants to re-up.
Statuses you’ll see
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| DRAFT | Order is being built; nothing is in Shopify yet |
| CLASSIFYING | AI is still working on the rows |
| NEEDS REVIEW | AI wasn’t confident enough — needs your sign-off |
| READY | Approved and ready to push to Shopify |
| APPROVED | Already pushed and live |
| SENT TO SUPPLIER | PO sent; waiting on supplier confirmation |
| CONFIRMED | Supplier confirmed the PO |
| PARTIAL | Some variants received, others not yet |
| RECEIVED | Fully received |
| ERROR | Something failed — see the error message |
Tags you’ll see in Shopify Admin
Every product TC pushes gets stamped with searchable tags:
tc-imported— every TC-pushed producttc-order-{id}— products from a single buying batch (use this for batch-level filtering, e.g. re-printing labels for one order){seasonCode}— e.g.PF2025for Pre-Fall 2025; bundles every drop in the seasonbrand-{name}— e.g.brand-Lardini- Plus category, subcategory, pattern, colour, country tags
Combine tags in Shopify Admin’s product filter:
tag:tc-imported AND tag:PF2025— everything from Pre-Fall ‘25tag:tc-order-247— only products from order #247tag:tc-imported AND tag:brand-Lardini— every Lardini product
Metafield namespaces
tc_core— primary enrichment (category, colour, fabric, fit, occasion, etc.)tc_measure— physical measurements (chest flat, sleeve length, etc.)tc_trade— supplier-facing identifiers (supplier_ref / vendor code)shopify.*— don’t touch. Reserved.
Roles
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything. Exactly one per store — usually the founder or buying lead. |
| Buyer | All workflows above. Can’t change AI settings or theme. |
| Viewer | Read-only — for accountants, supplier reps, anyone who shouldn’t be editing. |
Systems to know
- Anthropic Claude — the AI behind parse, enrich, and classification. When it’s down, those flows wait.
- Fly.io — where ThreadCloud is hosted. Operated by ThreadCloud Support; the team doesn’t touch it.
- Shopify Admin — the store backend. ThreadCloud writes to it; you can read from it.
- ThreadCloud Support — reachable at hello@threadcloud.io for anything the runbook doesn’t solve.