Nothing has gone out today

The mistake

A bulk image-processing script applies the same centred square crop to every product photo in the catalog, cutting tight enough that only the middle of each image survives. For visually similar products — a grey sofa, a grey rug, a grey doormat — that centre crop is nearly identical, so the resulting thumbnails become indistinguishable across the catalog even though the underlying products are completely different. Any downstream process that identifies items by looking at the storefront images, including customers ordering and warehouse staff picking stock, can no longer tell one product from another, and fulfillment stops.