Commerce · App Starter
Auction Platform Template
Listings, live bids, seller dashboards, and settlement — a two-sided auction platform generated into code you own.
Auctions are unforgiving software: a bid that saves twice, a listing that closes at the wrong second, or a history that can't be replayed will cost you your bidders' trust. This starter generates the hard parts — bid integrity, listing lifecycle, two-sided accounts — as a codebase you own and can verify line by line.
- 6 core entities
- Full bid history
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · Data model
What's inside: the data model
An auction platform is really a ledger with a countdown attached. These six tables keep both honest: who listed what, who bid what and when, who won, and how the money and reputation settled afterward.
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
listings | Items up for auction — description, images, starting price, optional reserve, and open/close times that drive the lifecycle. |
bids | Every bid ever placed, with bidder, amount, and timestamp, immutable once written — the record that makes outcomes defensible. |
sellers | The supply side: seller profiles with their listings, sale history, payout details, and accumulated ratings. |
buyers | The demand side: bidder profiles with watchlists, active bids, wins, and the payment history that earns bidding privileges. |
orders | What a closed listing becomes when it sells — winning bid, fees, payment status, and fulfillment tracking through completion. |
reviews | Post-transaction ratings in both directions, tied to real orders only, so reputation reflects deals that actually happened. |
02 · Screens
Signature modules
Bid history & integrity
01Bids append to an immutable log — no edits, no deletions — with validation against listing state, increments, and close time in one transaction. When a bidder disputes an outcome, you replay the log instead of arguing.
Listing lifecycle
02Draft, scheduled, live, closing, closed, settled: listings move through explicit states with the rules for each written in your code. Reserve handling, close-time behavior, and relisting of unsold items are decisions you can read and change.
Seller dashboard
03Sellers manage listings, watch live bidding on their items, and track orders through payment and fulfillment from one screen. Sale history and rating trends give your supply side a reason to keep listing with you.
Two-sided accounts
04One person can buy and sell without juggling logins — roles are per-activity, not per-account. Watchlists, outbid alerts, and payout details each live where they belong, and your policies for who may bid or list are enforceable rules.
03 · Process
How it works
- 1You
Describe your auction format
Timed listings or scheduled sales, reserves or none, open increments or proxy bidding — describe the format and rules, and the starter structures itself around them.
- 2Vibe mode
Shape it in Vibe mode
Add buyer premiums, a soft-close rule that extends bidding on late bids, or category-specific listing fields — each refinement is a conversational change landing in reviewable code.
- 3Governed mode
Launch through the governed pipeline
Go live with approval gates and an audit trail, deployed on your infrastructure. Bid records and settlement data stay in your database, where a marketplace's trust layer belongs.
04 · Fit
Who the Auction Platform starter is for
Niche marketplace founders
Collectible categories, industrial surplus, salvage vehicles, rare plants — narrow markets support real auction businesses, but general-purpose marketplaces bury them and take a cut forever. Owning the platform means your category's quirks become features and the take rate is a number you choose.
Auction houses moving online
A physical auction business taking bidding online shouldn't rent its core operation from a platform that also hosts its competitors. This starter puts your catalog, bidder relationships, and settlement records on your own infrastructure, under your brand and terms.
Businesses liquidating through auctions
Dealers, estate services, and surplus operations that sell by auction weekly need the mechanics without marketplace fees on every hammer price. A platform you own turns per-sale costs into fixed costs — and your buyer list into an asset you keep.
Developers building bid-shaped products
Reverse auctions for services, tender platforms, penny formats, sealed bids — anything with competitive time-boxed offers shares this skeleton. Starting from working bid integrity and lifecycle management beats rediscovering the race conditions yourself.
05 · Yours
Customize it, own it
Make it yours
Auction formats are policy decisions, and here policy is code: switch open bidding to proxy bidding, add anti-sniping extensions, introduce buyer premiums or seller tiers, or define category-specific listing templates with fields your niche cares about — condition grades, provenance notes, lot numbers. In Vibe mode these are conversations that end in commits.
The platform around the auction grows the same way: plug in your payment processor for deposits and settlement, add identity verification before high-value bidding, or build an API for power sellers to bulk-list. It's a standard full-stack codebase with no runtime dependency on Dual7 — the marketplace you build on top of it is entirely yours.
Why a starter, not a subscription
Marketplace platforms take a percentage of every sale, forever, and their rules — fee changes, category policies, suspension decisions — arrive as announcements you can't appeal. Running your own auction platform replaces the take rate with infrastructure costs and puts the rulebook in your repository. Your sellers are your sellers; nobody upstream can re-rank, restrict, or price them.
The responsibility that comes with that is real: you operate the trust layer. The governed pipeline backs you with approval gates and an audit trail on every change, and the immutable bid log means the evidence is always there when a dispute lands.
06 · Industries
Industry versions
Charity Auction Platform
Silent auctions, gala bidding, and fund-a-need appeals on a platform your nonprofit owns — no percentage taken from the mission.
Art Auction Platform
Consignments, provenance, reserves, and settlement splits — an auction platform built for selling art, owned by the gallery running it.
Auction Platform template — frequently asked questions
What does the auction platform template include?
Six connected entities — listings, bids, sellers, buyers, orders, reviews — plus an immutable bid log with validation, an explicit listing lifecycle, seller dashboards, and two-sided account roles. Generated as full-stack source code you own and deploy.
How does it prevent bid race conditions and disputes?
Bid placement validates state, increment, and close time inside a single transaction, and the resulting log is append-only. Any contested outcome can be replayed from timestamped records — which is what separates an auction platform from a form that takes numbers.
Can it do proxy bidding or anti-sniping extensions?
Both are common refinements of the base bid engine. Proxy bidding adds a maximum-bid mechanism that auto-raises within increments; soft close extends the countdown when late bids land. Each is a rule change in code you can read and test before it touches a live sale.
How do payments and settlement work?
Orders track the winning amount, fees, and payment status, and you connect the payment processor of your choice — deposits, held funds, or invoice-based settlement, per your market's norms. Since you own the code, the money flow follows your rules, not a platform's.
Can one user be both a buyer and a seller?
Yes — roles attach to activity, not to the account, so a user lists items and bids on others' without separate logins. Reviews accumulate on each side independently, keeping seller reputation and buyer reliability distinct signals.
Is this suitable for running a real marketplace business?
It's the platform layer — listings, bidding, settlement, reputation — generated as production code you harden and operate like any commerce system. What it removes is the multi-month build of auction mechanics and the perpetual percentage a rented marketplace takes.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Auction Platform on your terms
Listings, live bids, seller dashboards, and settlement — a two-sided auction platform generated into code you own. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.