Well I think I almost fixed it. Turned into another use case instead.

So if the User chooses to navigate back to the product through the link in the cart, that creates the behavior of overwriting the first choice with the next choice they make (the cart item is overwritten).

But if they navigate some other way back to the store and then back to the product, they can then choose a different variant and add that one to the cart. Then both choices are in the cart.

So the updated question then becomes, how to correct this behavior?

It doesn't sound like there is anything to fix. If you weren't able to click-through in the cart to edit the line item, the only way to edit it would be to delete it, then start over. That would require navigating to and trying to find the product again. In many stores, that would be annoying. In almost all stores, this would be a good reason for an abandoned cart.

Thanks Will and you make a valid point. In the office here we were tossing it around this afternoon and came to the same conclusion.

But this could also be best resolved with the addition of two buttons-

1. Edit Item with the additional arguments in the URL to edit that Item / Variant (as most modern carts do today).

2. A button that says "Continue Shopping" that sends the user back to the store without having to navigate as much to it. (Again, common in most stores).

I think if I had seen buttons along those lines this wouldn't have been an issue at all. And while I'm sure there is a way to customize this, Id hope to see this functionality in future versions! :-)

So, you're saying Hotcakes is not a modern cart? 😳

Anyhow... I guess a less modern way to do this is add those links/buttons to your cart view in your custom viewset. The current view model should have everything you need. It also may be a good idea to create a GitHub issue to potentially have this added as a new feature so we can someday make Hotcakes Commerce modern enough for you. 🤪