Komal's Shelf Match

She walks the godown aisles with a deck of photos, tapping each shelf as she finds the item, and the stock check finishes itself.

Who this is for

Komal Rathod is twenty-three and has worked two years in a Bhiwandi godown holding about nine hundred cartons across forty racks. Stock check falls on the last Saturday of the month. She reads Marathi comfortably and English slowly, and the printed list is in English, in small type. By eleven she is standing in aisle C with a sheet she cannot read fast, waiting for someone to walk over and tell her what item 214 is.

How the job is done today

The owner prints a list off his laptop, one line per item in short forms like BRG-STL-12. Komal walks with the sheet and a pencil. When she cannot read a line she shouts across to Anil at the far end, or waits for him to come over. Counts go in pencil on the back of the sheet and rack numbers go from memory. At night the owner photographs the sheet into the godown WhatsApp group, and corrections happen on Monday from whoever remembers what. Two months ago a whole row of cartons was counted twice because the order on the sheet did not match the order of the aisle.

The screens, in order

1. Pick your aisle — Lets Komal choose the one stretch of racks she is about to walk, so a round is an aisle and not the whole godown.
2. The card — Fills the screen with one large photo of one item so she knows what she is looking for without reading a word.
3. Tap the shelf — Shows a picture of the aisle as it looks from its mouth, so she taps the rack and shelf she actually found the item on.
4. How many — Records the count with a big tap-up and tap-down, no keyboard and no typing.
5. Odd one out — For when the thing on the shelf is not the thing on the card, letting her photograph it and set the card aside instead of guessing.
6. Round finished — Shows the stack of cards she cleared in that aisle and the small stack she has left for the owner to look at.
7. Owner's round sheet — Gives Shaikh bhai the plain result of one walk, with the mismatches at the top and their photos attached.

What it keeps track of

• Item cards — a photo of the item, which shelf it is supposed to be on, how many should be there, a short name, and a recording of that name said out loud
• Aisles and shelves — which aisle, how many racks, how many shelves per rack, and a photo of the aisle taken standing at its mouth
• Rounds — who walked, which aisle, which day and what time, how many cards cleared, how many set aside
• Finds — which card, which shelf it was actually on, how many were there, and a photo if she took one
• Players — name, rounds walked, cards cleared, and the aisles they know best

The one decision that matters

The one decision is whether the game keeps a clock. A clock is the obvious move: race the aisle, beat last month, and stock check starts to feel like play. But Komal is slow only at reading, and a clock quietly turns that into a penalty she can watch tick. So no clock. Score the round on what is actually worth money to the godown instead: cards cleared, shelves matched right, and mismatches caught. A carton found on the wrong shelf should be worth more than a round finished early. The photo does the talking, the written name appears only if she taps to hear it, and the only counter on screen is how many cards are left in this aisle.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out barcode and QR scanning. It sounds like the fast path, but a good number of cartons in that godown have rubbed-off labels or are wrapped over, and the moment a scan fails the game becomes a person crouching in a dark aisle angling a phone at a sticker. Photos never fail that way. Also leave out any comparison between Komal and the other two helpers. In the first version the round is between her and the aisle, nothing else.

How you would know it worked

Komal walks aisle C end to end alone and calls nobody over to read anything to her. Shaikh bhai opens her round sheet before she has left the godown, and four cartons sitting on the wrong shelf are already listed with photos.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I work in a godown in Bhiwandi with about nine hundred cartons on forty racks, and I want the monthly stock check to feel like a game on my phone instead of a printed English list I need someone to read out for me. Show me one big photo of an item at a time, let me tap the aisle and shelf where I actually found it and tap how many were there, and if the thing on the shelf is not the thing in the photo let me take a picture and set that card aside. No clock and no hurrying me, just show how many cards are left in the aisle I picked. Keep it working where there is no signal deep inside the godown and send everything up when I come out. At the end make a simple sheet for Shaikh bhai with the cards I cleared and the ones I set aside, and send it to him on WhatsApp.