Plan Design Consultants · CARL

Kickstart today.
Where the data lives.

A map of every place Kickstart keeps or reads data, how the data gets there, and what to know before any of it moves into the next version with the CRM.

Roadmap item 5.1Kickstart v74.8 liveChecked Nov 15, 2026

1At a glance — the four places, in one screen
2The picture — how the parts connect
3Where each kind of data lives — the main table
4A plan's trip through Kickstart — step by step, and what each step touches
5Cloudflare KV: saved plan work
6Airtable: the plan record
7Box: source files
8Cloudflare D1: Form 5500 lookup
9The browser
10The services — each Cloudflare Worker and its routes
11What is not used
12Before moving it
13Open questions
14How this was checked
15Glossary

1At a glance

Kickstart's data sits in four places. Kickstart itself is a single web page that holds nothing; it reaches each place through a small service.

Cloudflare KV

Saved plan work

Everything a staff member has loaded and done for a plan, including census detail. One saved file per save. Section 5

Airtable

The plan record

The plan directory, plan-year tracking, the team roster and alerts. No participant data. Section 6

Box

Source files

Adoption agreements, census files and recordkeeper downloads. Kickstart is not connected to it. Section 7

The browser

Work in progress

Files are read and checked in the browser tab. Gone when the tab closes unless saved. Section 9

The short answers

Is Cloudflare used? Yes: the page, the services, and the saves. Is D1 used? Not for plan data. D1 only holds public Form 5500 filings that Kickstart looks up. Is Box used? For keeping files, yes. Kickstart does not read from it or write to it.

2The picture

Solid arrows are connections Kickstart makes. The dashed arrow is a person carrying a file by hand.

3Where each kind of data lives

This is the table to start from. Each row links to the section with the detail.

Data	Where it lives	How it gets there	Good to know
Saved plan work: current and prior census, recordkeeper balances, questionnaire answers, adoption agreement fields, corrections, screen state	Cloudflare KV, namespace `kickstart-save`. One file per save. Section 5	A staff member saves in Kickstart, or Kickstart saves once when validation passes.	Holds names, SSNs and pay. Each save expires after 90 days.
Plan directory and plan-year tracking	Airtable, PDC base. Section 6	Kept up outside Kickstart. Kickstart only reads it.	Plan-level only. Used to show the plan banner, never as an input to a filing.
Team roster and alerts (the bell)	Airtable, PDC base: PDC Team and Alerts tables.	Kickstart reads the roster, and reads and writes alerts.	The one place Kickstart writes to Airtable.
Source files: adoption agreements, census files, recordkeeper downloads, samples	Box, Kickstart folder. Section 7	Put there by people.	Kickstart is not connected to Box. Airtable stores each plan's Box folder link.
Prior-year Form 5500 figures	Cloudflare D1, Form 5500 database. Section 8	Loaded from the public DOL data set.	Public data. Read-only.
Files being worked on right now	The browser tab, in memory. Section 9	Read in the browser when a file is chosen.	Gone when the tab closes unless saved. The adoption agreement PDF is the exception: it is sent out to be read by an AI model.
Small conveniences: contacts, metrics, validation and questionnaire drafts	The browser's local storage, on that one computer.	Written by Kickstart as the person works.	Not shared between computers.

4A plan's trip through Kickstart

Following one plan from start to finish shows which store each step touches.

Find the plan.The staff member searches by plan name, sponsor or EIN. Kickstart shows a banner with the plan's basics.
Reads Airtable through kickstart-directory
Load the files.They choose the adoption agreement, the questionnaire, the prior-year census, the current-year census and the recordkeeper download from their computer. The files usually come out of the plan's Box folder first.
Browser only
Read the adoption agreement.The PDF is sent to a service that has an AI model pull out the plan provisions.
Leaves the browser: adoptk-vision, then an AI model
Look up last year's 5500.Kickstart fetches the prior-year filing figures for the plan's EIN.
Reads D1 through form5500-lookup
Confirm, validate and correct.Kickstart checks the census, ties it to the recordkeeper balances, and the staff member fixes what needs fixing.
Browser only
Save.The whole working state is written as one saved file. Kickstart also saves once on its own when validation passes.
Writes KV through kickstart-save
Come back later.Opening a save loads that file back into the browser and puts the person where they left off.
Reads KV through kickstart-save
Send a note to a teammate.The bell sends a task or note to another team member.
Writes Airtable through kickstart-alerts
Produce the outputs.The 5500 figures, the 8955-SSA list, the force-out list, the RMD list and the ASC export are built in the browser and downloaded to the person's computer.
Browser only

5Cloudflare KV: saved plan work

KV is a simple store: a name goes in with a value, and the same name gets the value back. Kickstart uses it to keep each save as one file.

How a save is stored

Namespace	`kickstart-save` (ID `873021be02b44ccda64295aaa9150580`)
Name of each save	`EIN_year_timestamp`, for example `832677397_2025_…`. A second copy named `EIN_year_latest` always points at the newest save for that plan and year.
What is stored	A wrapper (name, label, when it was saved, app version, plan name, plan year, EIN, size) around the full working state.
How long it is kept	90 days from the save. After that Cloudflare deletes it.
How many there are	55 saves across 13 plans on Nov 14, 2026.

What is inside a save

Group	What it holds	Participant detail?
Questionnaire	The PRQ answers and the file name.	No
Prior-year census	Every row and column of the file, plus the row count and file name.	Yes
Current-year census	Every row and column, the raw file text, the column mapping, the row count and file name.	Yes
Recordkeeper balances	One line per participant with balances and money types, plus plan totals.	Yes
Adoption agreement	The fields pulled from the document and the plan's eligibility rules.	No
Validation	The result and whether it passed.	Yes (findings name people)
Staff decisions	Data corrections, ownership and family groups, name links, eligibility overrides, 8955-SSA confirmations.	Yes
Housekeeping	App version, build date, plan year, contacts, which screen the person was on.	No

Important

This is the only place in the setup that holds SSNs and pay at rest. It is also the only copy of the staff member's corrections and decisions. Because saves expire after 90 days, none of it is permanent.

6Airtable: the plan record

One Airtable base, the PDC base (ID appRcNScOvJoSppiS), holds everything about plans that is not participant data. It has 14 tables.

Table	What it is	Fields	Used by Kickstart?
PDC Plans	One row per plan: plan and sponsor name, EIN, last filed 5500 figures, recordkeeper, Box folder link.	66	Read (search and banner)
Plan Years	One row per plan per year: which documents are in, counts, eligibility provisions, prior questionnaire answers, recordkeeper and contract number, save key.	81	Read (banner)
Recordkeepers	Recordkeeper names and file format.	4	Read
PDC Team	Staff names, emails, titles and roles.	16	Read (sign-in picker, contact)
Alerts	Notes and tasks sent between staff from the bell.	12	Read and write
PDC Clients	The client list: client ID, plan type, safe harbor, investment company, EINs from ASC and the CRM.	26	No
PRQ Responses	Questionnaire submissions.	77	No
Adoption Agreements (ASC)	Plan provisions as held in ASC.	156	No
PDC Advisors	Advisor contacts.	11	No
Workflow Templates, Template Tasks, Projects, Project Tasks	Task tracking for staff workflows.	8, 6, 12, 18	No
Edit Log	A record of changes made to the base.	14	No

"Used by Kickstart" means the Kickstart page reaches that table through one of its services. The PDC Portal, a separate page, reads and writes this same base.

Good to know

What Kickstart reads from Airtable is for orientation only. Anything that lands on a filing comes from the adoption agreement, the questionnaire or the census, never from the directory.

Table IDs

PDC Plans	tblclk0N1hsNoS2NP	Plan Years	tbl4uEAFEflu4aWzc
Recordkeepers	tblk84ioovMtLVIEI	PDC Team	tblF40egZen0IqgUd
Alerts	tblvm8RhebZqPpynL	PDC Clients	tbl3RD5LokskH6UsA
PRQ Responses	tblgE2x0XcOKHRbS5	Adoption Agreements (ASC)	tblwyI3boGn3JtEmp
PDC Advisors	tblaAJpik8yTdul3X	Edit Log	tblkkBpolFL3LWBUi
Projects	tbl0rGFOUbmfetYss	Project Tasks	tblwCsTCvJi9FbxvL
Workflow Templates	tbleWyL0Qoesounpr	Template Tasks	tblE1lEvXxjES6745

7Box: source files

Box is where the original files are kept. Kickstart has no connection to it: nothing in the Kickstart page calls Box.

Folder	What is in it
Kickstart (top folder)	Sample and test files: the Anello Photonics test set, recordkeeper sample files, a few plan zip files.
Kickstart / Plan Files	66 plan folders.
Kickstart / RK File Schemas	Two write-ups of the John Hancock file layout.
Kickstart / Rule Specs	Not opened for this document.
Kickstart / kfor1-submissions, STable(k)	Folders for other projects. Not opened for this document.

The link between a plan and its Box folder is a field in Airtable (PDC Plans has a Box folder link; Plan Years has one for the year).

8Cloudflare D1: Form 5500 lookup

D1 is Cloudflare's database (tables and rows, queried with SQL). Kickstart uses it for one thing: looking up a plan's prior-year Form 5500 figures.

What it holds	Public Form 5500 filings from the DOL, in a table named `sf_filings`.
What Kickstart asks for	By EIN (and optionally year and plan number): participant counts, account balance counts, assets at the start and end of the year, employer and employee contributions, distributions, bond amount, plan codes.
Direction	Read-only. Kickstart never writes to it.
Databases in the account	`form5500` and `form5500_v2`. Which of the two the lookup service is connected to was not confirmed.

9The browser

Most of Kickstart's work happens in the staff member's browser tab and goes nowhere else.

In memory. The files a person loads are read and checked in the tab. Closing the tab without saving loses them.
Local storage. A few small items are kept on that computer between visits: contacts, metrics, validation state and questionnaire drafts, each stored per plan.
What leaves the browser. A save (to KV), a plan search term (to Airtable), an EIN (to the 5500 lookup), an alert (to Airtable), and the adoption agreement PDF (to an AI model).

10The services

Kickstart is one HTML file on Cloudflare Pages at kickstart-ci1.pages.dev. Each thing it stores or looks up goes through a Cloudflare Worker. All of them are in Tony's Cloudflare account, at addresses ending .tony-e07.workers.dev.

Service	What it does	What it offers	What it touches
kickstart-save	Keeps and returns saves.	Save, load one save, list saves, delete a save, health check.	KV namespace `kickstart-save`. Nothing else.
kickstart-directory	Finds plans and returns one plan with its plan years.	Search plans, get one plan, health check.	Airtable, read-only: PDC Plans, Plan Years, Recordkeepers, PDC Team.
kickstart-alerts	Runs the bell.	List the team, list alerts, create an alert, mark an alert read or done.	Airtable, read and write: PDC Team, Alerts.
form5500-lookup	Returns prior-year 5500 figures.	One lookup by EIN.	D1 Form 5500 database, read-only.
adoptk-vision	Reads the adoption agreement PDF.	Not re-read for this document.	Sends the PDF to an AI model.
parsek-api, chatk-api, carl-api-proxy	Text extraction and the Ask (k)arl chat.	Not read for this document.	Not confirmed.

Access

The save, directory and alerts services check only that a request carries a particular header. They do not check who is asking. That was acceptable for an internal tool. It is not enough for anything a client can reach.

11What is not used

D1 for plan data. No Kickstart plan, census or questionnaire data is in D1. A database named pdc-prq exists in the account, but it is empty: it has no tables.
R2 file storage. The account has two R2 buckets and neither belongs to Kickstart.
Box from inside Kickstart. Box is where files are kept, but Kickstart does not read or write it.

12Before moving it

Seven things that shape any decision about where this goes next.

What	Why it matters
Saves expire after 90 days	A plan nobody re-saves disappears from KV. Anything that should be kept needs a permanent home.
A save is one file, not rows	Nothing can look across plans (for example, every participant at one recordkeeper) without opening each save in turn.
Participant detail sits in KV	It is the only store here holding SSNs and pay. Wherever it goes next needs to be chosen for that.
Access checks are light	The services check for a header, not a person. This has to change before clients are let in.
Everything is in Tony's Cloudflare account	The page, the services, the KV namespace and the Form 5500 database either move together or are rebuilt on the PDC side.
Airtable's save key can lag	Plan Years has a field pointing at a save, but KV is the true list of saves.
A newer build is waiting	Live Kickstart is v74.8. Version 75.0, which adds the recordkeeper file readers, is built and tested but not deployed.

13Open questions

For the CRM version. These are decisions, not findings.

Where should participant detail live long-term: rows in a database, or saved files as today?
Does the CRM replace Airtable as the plan record, or sit beside it?
Do source files stay in Box, or move to Cloudflare as roadmap item 5.9 describes?
Which Cloudflare account owns the services going forward?

14How this was checked

Everything above was checked against the live systems on November 15, 2026, not written from memory.

Checked

The deployed source of kickstart-save, kickstart-directory, kickstart-alerts and form5500-lookup.
The list of KV namespaces, D1 databases and R2 buckets in the Cloudflare account.
The table list of the Airtable PDC base.
The contents of the Box Kickstart folder.
Every outside address the Kickstart page calls, and what it puts into a save (v74.8 and v75.0).

Not checked

adoptk-vision was changed on Nov 15 and was not re-read. In August it sent the PDF to an AI provider and stored nothing.
parsek-api, chatk-api and carl-api-proxy were not read.
What writes the save key fields on Plan Years.
Which Form 5500 database the lookup is connected to.
Record counts in Airtable. Two of the 66 Box plan folders were opened, and both were empty.

15Glossary

Cloudflare Pages	Where a web page is hosted. Kickstart is one file on Pages.
Worker	A small program running on Cloudflare that a web page can call. Each Kickstart service is one Worker.
KV	Cloudflare's simple store: a name and a value. Good for whole files, not for searching.
D1	Cloudflare's database, with tables and rows that can be searched.
R2	Cloudflare's file storage. Not used by Kickstart.
Airtable base	A set of linked tables in Airtable. The PDC base is the one described here.
Save	One stored copy of everything loaded and done for a plan year in Kickstart.
PRQ	The annual plan questionnaire the client fills in.
ASC	The plan administration system PDC uses today.

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