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Galactic Core is one commerce core that ships in three shapes. The vast majority of the API is identical across all three — the same catalog, cart, checkout, payments, customers, search, and webhooks. Each mode then adds a small, focused surface on top for its shape. Read this first so you know which parts you can build once and reuse, and which are specific to the store you’re integrating.

Vanilla GC (standard)

A single merchant’s own store — “Vanilla GC,” the default. Everything in the API reference applies.

Marketplace

Many merchants behind one storefront, with a unified cart and split payment. Adds the Marketplace surface on top of the standard API.

B2B (Wholesale)

A supplier selling to business buyers on terms. Adds the B2B (RFQ → quote → purchase order → invoice) surface on top of the standard API.

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The shared core (build this once)

Whatever mode you target, these work the same way and are the bulk of any integration:
  • Catalog & discovery — products, categories, product specifications, search, recommendations.
  • Cart & checkout — cart, wishlist, orders, pricing, promotions, gift cards.
  • Payments — the payment surface and its providers.
  • Customers & identity — customer profiles and the two ways a shopper signs in (a Galactic Core session token, or your own identity provider). See Authentication.
  • Everything operational — shipping, returns, reviews, messaging, content, analytics, tax, webhooks, and catalog ingestion.
If you’re building a normal single-store storefront, that shared core is the whole API — you don’t touch anything mode-specific.

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What each mode adds

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Vanilla GC (standard)

Vanilla GC is standard Galactic Core for a single merchant — one store you run yourself, on Galactic Core’s secure multi-tenant platform with strict per-store data isolation. It’s the default, and the one most integrations target. It adds nothing on top of the shared core: a merchant’s own storefront uses the shared services directly with the merchant’s own key.

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Marketplace

A marketplace aggregates many independent merchants into one shopping experience. It authenticates with a single marketplace operator key; the standard catalog reads automatically span every active merchant (each result stamped with the merchant it came from), a single cart can hold items from several merchants, and one payment is split to each merchant automatically after checkout. Mode-specific surface: client.marketplace — see the Marketplace service.

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B2B (Wholesale)

A wholesale store sells to business buyers at negotiated or tiered prices, on payment terms. The wholesale flow runs from request for quote to quote to purchase order to terms invoice, with buyer credit and payment on net terms. Buyer-facing actions form an API surface; the supplier prices quotes and manages the pipeline in their admin. A wholesale store has no direct pay-now checkout — its storefront surfaces the request-for-quote flow rather than an add-to-cart checkout. Wholesale is a per-store capability rather than a whole-deployment setting, so a retail store and a wholesale store can run side by side on the same standalone deployment. Each store’s commerce_model, returned by GET /v1/store/info, identifies which it is: retail for a standard cart-and-checkout storefront, or wholesale for the request-for-quote storefront. Because the value is per store, it is the reliable signal even when the deployment itself serves both kinds of store. Mode-specific surface: client.b2B — see the B2B service.
Marketplace and wholesale sit at different levels. Marketplace is a property of the whole deployment: a single operator key spans every merchant behind one storefront. Wholesale is a property of the individual store, so retail and wholesale stores can share one deployment. GET /v1/store/info reports each store’s commerce_model (retail or wholesale), which is how a storefront determines the right experience regardless of the deployment it runs on. The shared core is always present; the mode-specific surface — marketplace or B2B — appears only where it applies.

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Where to go next