Widget memory: booked slots, votes and counters on Shopify

A plain form forgets everything the moment it sends an email.

A Widgeteer widget can remember. Book Tuesday at 3pm, and that slot disappears for everyone else. Vote in a poll, and the total goes up for the next visitor.

No database to set up. No calendar to connect.

Describe a booking form, a poll or a sign-up counter, and Widgeteer gives it memory on its own. See it working in the showroom booking widget.

What it remembers

• First come, first served. A slot, a seat, a prize. Once someone takes it, everyone else sees it’s gone. Got more than one of a thing, like tables? Each one is booked on its own, so 7:30pm stays open until the last table goes.
• One per visitor. A vote, a rating, a reaction. A visitor can change their own, but can’t vote twice.
• Shared totals. Counts and tallies everyone sees.

Every write is also a normal submission. Your actions run and it shows up in Submissions, so you get the visitor’s details too.

How we protect it

• Tiny values only. Memory holds yes/no, numbers, or a short label of up to 64 characters, like a time slot. No names, no emails, no messages. Those stay in your private submissions.
• No addresses kept. We tell visitors apart by a short scrambled code, different for every widget, never the visitor’s address itself.
• No overwriting. Someone else’s booked slot can’t be taken over. Only the visitor who took it can change it.
• Checked on our server. Every write is checked before it’s saved, and the copy visitors read is signed, so nobody can swap in a fake one.

Limitations

• 64 KB per widget. That’s thousands of slots or votes. When it fills up, the oldest entries go first to make room.
• “One per visitor” is per connection, not per person. Two people on the same office wifi may count as one. Someone switching networks or using a VPN may count twice. Good for polls and reactions, not for elections.
• It’s readable. Visitors’ browsers need to see which slots are taken, so the memory is public, scrambled but not secret. That’s why it only holds tiny values, never personal details.
• Other visitors see changes within about 30 seconds. A slot might still look free for a moment. If two people grab it, our server gives it to the first and tells the second it’s taken.