Heliarch

Run your restaurant district from your living room: every store on your table, and an AI assistant you can coach.

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Try it (hands only, no sign-in): on a Quest 3 or 3S, open https://heliarch-contest.fly.dev in the Browser, pinch Enter the tabletop now and Allow the microphone. Full steps are below.

Inspiration

A district manager runs 8 to 20 restaurants, spends the week driving between them, and hears about a bad lunch rush the next day. I've spent more than 20 years in multi-unit restaurant and retail operations, up to leading 72 stores across several states, and I've lived that week more times than I can count. I wanted to sit down, put on a headset and run the whole district from home.

What it does

Heliarch puts your district on a round table in your real room, in passthrough. Stores that need you pulse red. Lift one and the full restaurant comes up, crew working and cars in the drive-thru, with only the stations missing their targets lit.

Then talk to Walter, a voice AI assistant powered by Claude. Ask why a store is red and he answers with the number against its target. Say "show me the problem" and the store turns to the trouble spot while he coaches the fix. Say "take me inside Store 47" and you are standing in the restaurant at life size. Ask for the labor matrix, say "email it to the store leadership" and the email types itself, workbook attached. Nothing sends until you say "send it". Ask for a multi-tab workbook and watch him build it, every formula checked, then flip through it with you before anything is sent. Teach him a house rule once and he plans around it.

At meeting time, managers join with a six-character code from a phone, tablet or laptop and sit around the same table. Say "Walter, present the store" and every phone follows the store in your hands.

Every hand action has a spoken version, and captions follow your view. Crew and guests are faceless figures: no faces, no names, no video. All data here is made up.

How we built it

WebXR with the Immersive Web SDK and three.js, in TypeScript: one link, nothing to install. Hands-first, with gestures tuned on real Quest hand tracking, table placement with anchors, and a quality ladder that protects frame rate. Walter's words come from Claude through our own server. The AI only proposes: our code checks every action and does all the math, and if the AI is unreachable a backup model, then an on-device Walter, still answer. I'm a solo, non-engineer founder; the code was built with Claude Code.

Challenges

Quest Browser hides permission prompts in VR and has no speech engine, so we ask for the microphone first and stream Walter's voice from our server. Keeping an AI honest took hundreds of red-team questions.

Accomplishments

A restaurant operator, not an engineer, built this, and held a real Quest-to-iPhone meeting around it.

What's next

Live stores through our QSR Inspector edge system (people become anonymous figures before anything leaves the store), a company-wide playbook, and a Meta Horizon Store release. Target launch: March 9, 2027, with our first pilot restaurants. Patent pending.

Walter is named after my grandfather. This one's for him.

How to try it (3 minutes)

Heliarch: 3-minute quick-start (Quest 3 / 3S, hands only, no sign-in)

OPEN IT (30 s)

  1. Put your controllers down. Sit at a table if you can. In the Quest Browser, open heliarch-contest.fly.dev.
  2. Pinch "Enter the tabletop now".
  3. When the card asks "Allow microphone?", pinch Allow, then Allow in the Browser prompt. The tabletop opens. (Walter only listens while you hold 🎙.)

WHERE THINGS ARE Above the store, three buttons float in a column: District | Store, Stores ▾, and ✥ Move. The menu (✦ Walter, Comfort, Session, ✕ Exit) floats beside the table.

TRY THESE (2½ min)

  1. See the district: pinch District. Seven stores; three pulse red. Pinch a red one (or grab it with your hand) and lift it: it comes alive. Pinch Store to see it big; District to go back.
  2. Talk to Walter: pinch ✦ Walter, hold 🎙, and ask:
    • "Why is Store 35 red?"
    • "Show me the problem."
    • "Take me inside Store 47." You're standing inside the restaurant at life size, the problem area glowing. Walk around. Clap once or say "back to the table" to come out.
    • "Bring up the labor matrix for Store 35." … "Email it to the store leadership." … "Send it." (Demo outbox only.)
    • "Build me a 4-tab P&L workbook for my 7 stores with labor %, food cost % and a dashboard, then email it to the Area Director." Watch the tabs fill in, "Verified ✓", and Walter flip through it. It stays open for you: say "Next tab" or "Show me the dashboard", or pinch a tab. The email waits beside it until you say "Send it." (Takes about a minute.) Later, "Show me the workbook" brings it back.
    • Teach him: "We never pull cashiers off the register. Remember that." Then: "How do I fix the sandwich line?"
    • Ask him anything else, too.
  3. Have a phone or tablet? In the headset pinch Session → Meeting → Start meeting. On the phone, open the same link and type the code under "Joining a meeting?" (or ☰ Menu → Meet → Join). Then in the headset say "Walter, present the store": the phone shows the store and follows it as you turn it. "Stop presenting" sends it back to the table.
  4. No hands needed: say "captions on", "make the table smaller", "turn the table left", or "what can I say?"

EXIT: pinch ✕ Exit twice.

IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG

  • Walter can't hear you: reload and pinch Allow.
  • No sound: pinch once anywhere, then check the volume.
  • Things in an odd place: Comfort → Reset layout.
  • No headset? The same link works on a computer: explore the store and type to Walter.

All stores, people and emails are made up. Walter is an AI assistant powered by Claude and can make mistakes. House rules you teach him stay on that headset.

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