Backstory

Built by the community, for the community

What happens when competing agencies start building together? Five Dutch Magento agencies, one shared problem, and a product that belongs to everyone. This is how Mago came to be.

Friday, 16:55

It starts with a ticket

New ticket · Friday 16:55

Subject: “Why isn’t SUMMER10 working???!”

Every Magento agency gets this ticket. A coupon that stopped working, a setting nobody can find, a report that has to be ready on Monday. And every agency answers it alone, with its own people, on its own Friday afternoon.

Same question. Same tuition. Not our edge.

That was the business case. Answering admin questions is not what sets an agency apart, so there was no reason to keep solving it five times over. It was something to build once, together.

How it started

From Marbella to a weekly call and a hackathon

  1. March 2026 · Marbella The five agencies at Hyvä Paradise in Marbella, March 2026

    A tan and no plan

    Hyvä Paradise. Five agencies get to know each other in a different setting. No product yet, just the realisation that they share the same problems.

  2. June 2026 · Mage Unconference Talking on the grass outside Mage Unconference, June 2026

    What are we going to build?

    More time to talk and share ideas. The question stops being whether to collaborate and becomes what to make. An AI assistant inside the Magento admin wins.

  3. Since then · every week The team together after the weekly call became a habit

    One call became weekly

    A shared list with an owner, a weekly alignment call, and code reviewed by people from a competing agency. Collaboration doesn’t start with a big plan. It starts with a first step.

  4. September 2026 · Zwolle Building Mago at the Mage-OS hackathon in Zwolle, September 2026

    Mage-OS hackathon

    Everyone in one room. The proof of concept turns into something you’d trust in a real store: permissions, confirmations, an audit trail.

  5. October 2026 · now

    A product for the community

    Mago is free, open source and installable today. Last year the strategy, this year the activation.

Who

Five agencies, one product, three rules

Competitors on every pitch, collaborators on this one. Mage-OS gave the project neutral ground: the repository, a stage, marketing and development time.

1

One shared list, and someone owns it

A single backlog for five companies, with a named owner so nothing drifts.

2

Your competitor reviews your code

Every pull request is read by someone from another agency. It keeps the quality honest.

3

Everyone plays to their strengths

Developers build, partner managers connect, Mage-OS hosts. Nobody has to do everything.

Mago
Control Alt DeleteAgency LintedAgency Made by MousesAgency MagmodulesModule vendor VendicAgency Mage-OS NederlandEnabler
From proof of concept to product

A demo is easy. A product you’d trust is not.

The clever part, an AI that reads your store and answers in plain language, was the demo. The boring part is what made it a product merchants can run: it only sees what your admin role allows, it asks before it changes anything, it never does more than you asked, and it keeps a record of what it did.

That boring part is why Mago is a colleague in your back office, not a chatbot on your website.

  • Your team only
  • Asks first
  • Never more than you
  • Keeps a record
Your turn

Find the problem everyone around you is solving alone

Mago is open source so you can build on each other’s work. The VIES VAT check came first; the Chamber of Commerce lookup was built on top of it. There’s plenty left to build to improve the lives of our merchants.

Contribute on GitHub ↗ See the add-ons Mage-OS ↗