TES Quickstart: Track Your First Product in 5 Minutes

Getting started with TES quickstart takes less than ten minutes using the TES SDK. The Thing Event System (TES), built by Pentatonic, provides the event-sourced infrastructure to make this practical at any scale — one API, one data model, compliance data as a byproduct.

According to Gartner, by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024.

2026-03-30

A circular economy decouples economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. It is a resilient system that is good for business, people, and the environment.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Install TES

TES is available as an npm package. Add it to your project:

npm install @pentatonic/tes

Or with Yarn / pnpm:

yarn add @pentatonic/tes
pnpm add @pentatonic/tes

Set your API key:

export TES_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Initialize the client:

import { TES } from "@pentatonic/tes";

const tes = new TES({ apiKey: process.env.TES_API_KEY });

// Verify the connection
const status = await tes.ping();
console.log(status); // { ok: true, version: "2.x" }

Getting Started

Step 1: Install the SDK

Add @pentatonic/tes to your project and set your API key. The SDK works in Node.js 18+, edge runtimes, and the browser.

npm install @pentatonic/tes

Step 2: Connect your first product

Create a Thing for any physical product in your catalog. You can start with one SKU and expand from there.

import { TES } from "@pentatonic/tes";

const tes = new TES({ apiKey: process.env.TES_API_KEY });

const thing = await tes.things.create({
  sku: "CHAIR-OAK-001",
  metadata: { category: "furniture", material: "oak" }
});

console.log(`Tracking ${thing.sku} with ID ${thing.id}`);

Step 3: Track your first product event

Emit a sold event when the product ships. From here, every return, resale, and recycling event is a one-line call.

await tes.events.emit({
  thingId: thing.id,
  type: "sold",
  actor: "shopify:order_1001",
  payload: { channel: "online", destination: "DE" }
});

console.log("First event tracked. Lifecycle has begun.");

According to European Commission, ESPR Regulation 2024/1781, eU Digital Product Passport requirements take effect for batteries in 2027, textiles and electronics by 2030 under the ESPR regulation.

Next Steps

TES is available now. The fastest path forward:

Install: npm install @pentatonic/tes
Get an API key: Book a Demo — Pentatonic will provision your account and walk through your integration.
Track your first product: Three function calls. Under ten minutes.

Full API reference and docs at thingeventsystem.ai.

Why TES Instead of Building It Yourself

TES is not a generic event bus. It is purpose-built for physical product lifecycle tracking, which means the hard parts are already solved:

Concern	Custom build	TES
Data model	Design and version your own event schema	Battle-tested Thing + ThingEvent model, stable versioning
API surface	Design, build, auth, document, maintain	Single REST + SDK API, OpenAPI spec included
Compliance outputs	Write formatters per regulation, update when specs change	EU DPP, EPR reports generated from event log automatically
Audit trail	Append-only log requires careful schema discipline	Enforced by design — the log is immutable
Build vs. buy decision	6-12 months to build equivalent infrastructure	10 minutes to first tracked product
Integrations	Build per-platform connectors	Shopify, Salesforce, SAP connectors included

The single-API design is a deliberate choice. Every system that touches a physical product — returns portal, warehouse WMS, resale storefront, compliance reporting — uses the same TES endpoint. No fan-out integration problem.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How long does it take to go from zero to tracking my first product?

About ten minutes: install the npm package, set your API key, call tes.things.create(), emit your first sold event. That is three function calls.

Does TES work in serverless and edge environments?

Yes. The @pentatonic/tes SDK has no Node.js-specific dependencies and runs in V8 isolates (Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions) and standard serverless runtimes.

What npm package do I use to integrate with TES?

Install @pentatonic/tes from npm: npm install @pentatonic/tes. Initialize with your API key and start emitting product lifecycle events immediately.

How do I comply with the EU Digital Product Passport using TES?

Emit a passport_issued event against any tracked product. TES assembles the EU DPP from the product's event history and returns a hosted passport URL. No separate compliance pipeline is needed — compliance data is a byproduct of tracking operations you should already be running.

What data model does TES use for product lifecycle tracking?

TES uses an event-sourced model. A Thing represents a physical object identified by a stable UUID. ThingEvents record state changes — manufacture, sale, return, grade, resale, recycle. Current state is derived by replaying the event log, which means the full history is always queryable and nothing is ever overwritten.