Technology & Patent Portfolio

The architecture behind execution control.

Twelve USPTO provisional patents pending, covering the workflow-gated execution stack from production order through FSMA 204 traceability — grounded in two years of production use at Anu Sushi.

The Protected Mechanisms → Talk to the Team
12
USPTO Provisionals
2+ yrs
Production Validated
1M+
Units Captured / Year
4
Filing Waves
Standard Framing

Twelve USPTO provisional patents pending, covering the full workflow-gated execution stack from production order through FSMA 204 traceability, grounded in two years of production use at Anu Sushi.

The Four Protected Mechanisms

What the patent portfolio
actually covers.

Shrink Manager's architecture rests on four mechanisms the filings describe. Three concern how the compliance record is created. The fourth turns that same capture into a production decision. Each is a specific operational pattern rather than a generic feature claim.

01 / GATING
Workflow-gated task completion
Compliance steps execute in a defined sequence, enforced by the system rather than by training. The intent is that the record cannot run ahead of the work it describes.
Floor-level enforcement
02 / TEMPORAL
Temporal authenticity enforcement
Records are designed to reflect what happened when — binding the creation of a compliance record to the moment of the work rather than to a later write-up.
Time bound to the work
03 / DUAL-SOURCE
Dual-source corroborative verification
Human attestation paired with independent machine-generated evidence, so a record does not rest on a single unverifiable input.
Independent corroboration
04 / CLOSED-LOOP
Closed-loop capture and adjust
Shrink is captured as a unit-level event at the point of work, tied back to the production order and lot that produced it, and carried into the next production and purchasing cycle. The loop closes without anyone re-entering anything.
Captured where the work happens
Where This Leads

Most systems are told
what already happened.

That distinction is the whole reason the architecture is built the way it is — and the reason the filings are worth more than the feature list they sit under.

The conventional pattern
Work happens on the floor. Later, someone tells the software about it — a form at end of shift, a spreadsheet on Monday, a binder assembled before an audit. The data is a description of the work, written by someone remembering it.
The execution-layer pattern
Data creation is embedded in the work itself. The record is a condition of proceeding, not a report written afterward — so the data arrives as a structured account of what was done, at the moment it was done.
Once physical operations become machine-readable, they become machine-intelligible.

Automation and machine intelligence are only ever as reliable as the operational data underneath them. A model reasoning over records that were reconstructed from memory is reasoning over someone's recollection. That is why the architecture matters more than any individual feature in it, and why the portfolio protects pieces of one architecture rather than twelve unrelated inventions.

Today What Shrink Manager does now
Comply. Lot-level receiving, transformation and shipping captured at the point of work.
See. Produced, sold and shrink visible the same day rather than at month-end.
Understand. The produced-vs-sold gap broken out by site, product, shift and SKU.
Decide. The gap feeds the next production order.
The end state is management by exception rather than by inspection. Not more dashboards for someone to read, but an operation where the ordinary case handles itself and a person's attention goes to the case that doesn't.
The Patent Estate

Twelve provisionals.
Filed across four waves.

The portfolio was assembled deliberately, and it protects pieces of a single architecture rather than a collection of separate inventions. The first wave established the foundational execution-control claims. The second extended coverage across adjacent workflows and operational patterns. The third anchored execution control to the highest-frequency events on a production floor. The fourth closed the loop between capture and the next production cycle.

Wave 1 · Foundational execution-control claims
4 provisionals · Q1 2026
The foundational filings establish the workflow-gated execution pattern itself: that compliance-relevant steps execute in a verifiable sequence, that records are generated as a byproduct of the work, and that the architecture coexists with ERP rather than replacing it.
Wave 2 · Expansion across adjacent workflows
5 provisionals · Apr 2026
The expansion filings extend the foundational claims into the workflow surfaces where regulated production actually breaks down — lot transformation, label generation, multi-site operations, and the interface between operator attestation and downstream traceability.
Wave 3 · Production-anchored execution claims
2 provisionals · May 2026
The third wave anchors execution control to the highest-frequency operational events on a regulated production floor: the shift boundary and the customer order itself. These filings cover the intersection between scheduling, authority, and workflow scoping — the operational layer adjacent systems cannot reach.
Wave 4 · Closed-loop capture and adjust
1 provisional · Jun 2026
The fourth wave closes the loop. Shrink is captured as a unit-level event at the point of work, reconciled against the originating production order and lot, and carried into the next production and purchasing cycle — the keystone filing that connects the execution layer to the decision it informs.
On the filings themselves. Provisional applications are not published by the USPTO, and Shrink Software does not publish its application numbers, specifications, or claim language. Diligence-stage investors, acquirers, and channel partners receive the complete filing record and the underlying specifications under NDA.
What The Filings Are

Not features. Mechanisms.

Most software in the FSMA 204 market competes on feature lists. This portfolio is structured differently. Each filing covers a specific operational mechanism — a way the production floor actually has to behave — rather than a generic capability.

That is a deliberate choice about what the company is building toward. Provisional applications establish a priority date; they do not grant enforceable rights, and no claim here has been examined. What the filings do is stake the ground the architecture already occupies in production, ahead of the 2027 utility conversion window.

A
Operationally grounded
Every filing attaches to a workflow pattern that has been running in production for over two years across ten institutional food sites.
B
Vertically extensible
The same mechanisms are relevant wherever execution has to be audit-verifiable. Food is the first vertical, not the boundary of the design.
C
Buyer-visible value
The mechanisms produce records that hold up in institutional buyer audits. Compliance is not the framing — it is the byproduct of how the work is structured.
D
Acquirer-relevant
Mechanism-level filings survive product roadmap changes and stay relevant across the verticals the architecture extends into.
Architectural Validation

Two years in production.
Ten sites. Over a million units.

Shrink Manager has been running in live production for more than two years at Anu Sushi LLC, an affiliated operator, across 10 institutional food production sites, capturing more than one million production units as structured events each year. The portfolio reflects an architecture that already works at scale, not an idea about one.

10
Production Sites
1M+
Units Captured / Yr
2+ yrs
Live In Production
12
Provisionals Filed
Portfolio Roadmap

From provisional
to utility.

The provisional filings establish priority dates. The 2027 statutory window is when those filings convert into utility applications.

Filed · 2026
Provisional applications
Twelve USPTO provisional patents filed across four waves between January and June 2026. Each filing covers a specific operational mechanism, grounded in production use.
In Progress · 2026–2027
Production hardening
Continued operational validation of each mechanism inside live production environments. Refinement of claims language ahead of utility conversion. International filing strategy under review.
Planned · 2027
Utility conversion
Conversion of provisional filings into utility applications during the 2027 statutory window. PCT filing for international protection in markets aligned with channel partner expansion.
Where The Architecture Goes
Two doors into the rest of the platform.

An execution-control architecture
built for the long horizon.

If you're evaluating Shrink Manager — as an operator or a channel partner — the technology and patent portfolio is the part of the story most worth understanding directly.

Channel partner inquiries welcome: partners@shrinksoftware.com

Patent status reflects USPTO provisional application filings as of June 2026. Provisional applications establish a priority date and do not by themselves grant patent rights; no claim has been examined, and utility conversion is planned for the 2027 statutory window. "Patent pending" is used here in accordance with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office conventions. All third-party trademarks referenced elsewhere on this site are the property of their respective owners.