Swell vs Vendure

Swell

Live /:models schema with field types and descriptions for every store. One full-access secret key per environment, with no scoped or read-only key.

Vendure

Full cart, coupon, shipping and payment flow in the GraphQL Shop API, with ErrorResult types an agent can branch on. No vendor-hosted API. Vendure Cloud is only partly available.

Swell

1. Call GET /:models once and cache it. It's the ground truth for custom fields
2. Check result.errors after every write. A failed validation still returns 200
3. Use $set to replace an array. A plain PUT merges arrays by element id and never shrinks them
4. Use an sk_test_ key while testing. A bare sk_ prefix is live
5. Keep expand and include small. Each level past the first three points adds rate-limit weight

Vendure

1. Keep the session token from the first Shop API response and send it on every call. It holds the active order
2. Check each mutation result's __typename and errorCode. Expected failures return 200 with an ErrorResult
3. Don't retry addItemToOrder blindly. Read the active order first, since a repeat adds the quantity again
4. For server-side work, enable api-key in authOptions.tokenMethod and give the key one role in one channel
5. Run 3.7.3 or later, and purge old job records, which may still hold session tokens