DEV Community

Cover image for ScopeCrafter: Privacy-First Proposal & Scope Generator for Freelancers
DracFiendMG
DracFiendMG

Posted on

ScopeCrafter: Privacy-First Proposal & Scope Generator for Freelancers

#devchallenge #hf26challenge #gemma #webdev

Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle Submission 💸

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle

What I Built

Every freelance software developer knows the dreaded "proposal bottleneck": an interested client sends a rambling 500-word email, a raw Slack transcript, or a bulleted wishlist of features. Turning that messy brain dump into a clear, contract-grade proposal—complete with realistic hours, technical architecture, deliverable milestones, and scope boundaries—routinely takes 2 to 4 non-billable hours.

Worse yet, if you miss a requirement, you risk unpaid scope creep. If you paste the client's confidential trade secrets into closed commercial APIs, you risk breaching strict Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

ScopeCrafter is a privacy-first micro-SaaS and proposal studio engineered specifically for freelance software developers:

  1. Raw Client Ingestion: Paste informal emails, chat transcripts, or rough specs.
  2. Automated NDA Privacy Shield: Locally redacts client emails, phone numbers, secret API keys (sk-live_...), and internal staging URLs before any model processing.
  3. Structured 3-Milestone Decomposition: Formats the project into three distinct phases (Foundation & Data Modeling, Core Feature Implementation, Security Hardening & Handover) with concrete acceptance criteria.
  4. Scope Creep Boundaries: Automatically identifies and enumerates explicit out-of-scope items (e.g. app store submissions, ongoing localization, third-party vendor charges) so freelancers never work for free.
  5. Interactive Commercial Studio: A live rate calculator lets freelancers slide their hourly rate ($50–$250/hr) and watch milestones and deposits recalculate dynamically in real-time.
  6. Client-Ready Pitch View: Exports directly to clean Markdown or a print-ready PDF with formal signature blocks.

The Side Hustle Business Model

  • The Target User: Freelance web/mobile developers and boutique two-person agencies.
  • Pricing: $5/month or $9/month flat subscription.
  • Value Proposition: A freelancer charging $85/hr saves ~10 hours a month on proposal writing ($850 in recovered billing potential) for the cost of a cup of coffee.
  • The Scalability Advantage: Built on open-weight inference with $0 marginal cost per generation, allowing the side hustle to maintain a 98%+ gross margin without being held hostage by closed API token pricing.

Demo

  • Live Demo URL: https://scopecrafter.onrender.com (Deployed on Render)
  • Local Run: http://localhost:3000 via npm start
  • Demo Walkthrough Video / Recording: scopecrafter_demo

Interactive Screenshots 

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [✨ ScopeCrafter Studio]     Side Hustle: $5/mo SaaS   |  Privacy Shield: Active (NDA)  |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [Step 1: Client Inquiry]                 | [Milestone Studio Breakdown]                 |
| - Template: 🔒 Confidential Fintech     | - Total Bid: $6,800 USD (80 hrs @ $85/hr)    |
| - Raw text with secret API key & email   | - Deposit: $2,040 (30% upfront on signing)   |
|                                          |                                              |
| [Step 2: Parameters & Privacy]           | [Milestone 1: Foundation & Auth] (30% share) |
| - Rate: $85/hr (interactive slider)      |   Deliverables & Acceptance Checklist        |
| - Timeline: 4 Weeks                      | [Milestone 2: Core Features]     (50% share) |
| - NDA Privacy Shield: [ON]               | [Milestone 3: Security & Handover] (20% share) |
|                                          |                                              |
| [✨ Craft 3-Milestone Proposal]          | [Explicit Out-of-Scope Boundaries] (Shield)  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Code

The full codebase is completely open-source under the MIT License:

GitHub logo DracFiendMG / scope-crafter

A privacy-first proposal and scope generator for freelance software developers.

ScopeCrafter âš¡

Privacy-First Proposal & Scope Generator for Freelance Software Developers
Built for Hacktoberfest 2026 Open-Source AI Challenge: Week 2 ("Side Hustle")

License: MIT Model Orchestration Deploy on Render

🎯 1. The "Side Hustle" Business Strategy

The Problem

Freelance developers and solo agency engineers lose 2 to 4 hours on every prospective client inquiry turning unstructured, messy client inputs (half-baked emails, WhatsApp/Slack rambling, raw Zoom transcripts) into professional, phased scopes of work. Even worse:

  1. Unpaid Administrative Overhead: Writing customized estimates for bids that might not close drains non-billable time.
  2. Scope Creep Disasters: Vague initial proposals lead to unpaid client revisions and project delays.
  3. Severe NDA & IP Liabilities: Freelancers routinely handle client trade secrets and confidential business logic. Pasting proprietary requests into closed commercial APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) risks logging, compliance violations, and intellectual property exposure.

The Solution & Business Model

ScopeCrafter is an open-source, privacy-first micro-SaaS engineered specifically for independent software developers:

  • The Product: Transforms raw client…
View on GitHub
  • Repository Structure:
    • server/index.js — High-performance Express server with streaming and REST endpoints.
    • server/services/privacyShield.js — Automated regex-based entity and secret redaction engine.
    • server/services/backboardService.js — Backboard SDK integration with persistent session threads and google/gemma-3-12b-it orchestration.
    • server/services/gemmaService.js — Google Gemma inference and embedded zero-latency fallback engine.
    • public/ — Zero-dependency, glassmorphic single-page studio with dynamic rate recalculator.
    • render.yaml — Declarative Infrastructure-as-Code blueprint for one-click Render deployment.

How I Built It

ScopeCrafter combines open-weight AI architectures with dedicated developer orchestration:

  1. Backboard SDK (backboard-sdk):
    • We integrated Backboard's official TypeScript/JavaScript client (BackboardClient).
    • Backboard manages session continuity across turns using threaded messaging (thread_id), allowing freelancers to iteratively refine scopes (e.g., "Make Milestone 2 a fixed-price deliverable" or "Add a staging review step") without losing previous context.
    • Directly routes inference to google/gemma-3-12b-it with structured JSON output enforcement (json_output: true).
  2. Google Gemma 3 12B IT (google/gemma-3-12b-it):
    • Operates as our primary reasoning core. Gemma 3 12B IT processes unstructured client inquiries with remarkable precision, translating ambiguous wishes into concrete deliverables, balanced hours, and contractual out-of-scope guardrails.
    • ScopeCrafter also features an embedded local Gemma MoE fallback engine to ensure zero-downtime availability even during upstream provider maintenance.
  3. Google Antigravity IDE:
    • Built and pair-programmed directly within Google Antigravity. Using rapid visual iteration, we crafted custom tokens, dark/light theme switching, and glassmorphic micro-animations.
  4. Render Cloud:
    • Packaged with a declarative render.yaml blueprint and containerized web runtime. Render hosts the production web service with automated health checks at /api/health.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Open-source and open-weight AI are not just philosophical ideals—for ScopeCrafter, they are the critical technical differentiator:

1. The NDA Problem (Why Closed APIs Fail Freelancers)

Clients frequently send proprietary wireframes, unreleased product ideas, and confidential database schemas. If a freelancer sends this text to closed APIs (such as OpenAI or Anthropic), the data is transmitted to proprietary servers where terms of service often reserve the right to log, inspect, or retain inputs for abuse monitoring and training.

By utilizing open-weight Gemma models, we guarantee:

  • Zero training on client inputs.
  • Total data isolation.
  • The ability for any agency to run the model on their own dedicated hardware or private VPC.

2. Micro-SaaS Unit Economics

To make a $5/month side hustle viable, your cost of goods sold (COGS) must remain predictable and lean. Calling closed commercial APIs for multi-thousand-token transcripts can cost $0.05 to $0.15 per run. A single active freelancer generating 30 proposals a month would wipe out the entire subscription profit margin!
Using open-weight Gemma models orchestrated via the Backboard SDK keeps margins at 90%+, making a $5/mo subscription infinitely scalable and sustainable.

My First User

To test the tool in the real world, I handed ScopeCrafter to a fellow freelance React developer who was struggling to bid on a messy 12-page Slack transcript from an early-stage founder.

What happened:

  • She pasted the messy chat into ScopeCrafter with the Privacy Shield turned on.
  • Within seconds, ScopeCrafter sanitized 2 client email addresses and an internal staging URL, outputting a structured 3-milestone proposal with explicit boundaries ("No native iOS build in v1").
  • She adjusted her rate to $95/hr using the live slider, copied the Markdown output into Notion, and sent it to the client.
  • The outcome: The founder accepted Milestone 1 within 48 hours because the acceptance criteria were crystal clear.
  • Her feedback: "I would gladly pay $10/month for this just for the out-of-scope boundaries alone—that usually takes me half a day to think through."

Prize Categories

I am officially entering ScopeCrafter into the following Hacktoberfest Week 2 categories:

  • 🌟 Overall Winner ($250 USD + DEV++) — A complete, production-ready micro-SaaS solving the non-billable proposal bottleneck for freelancers.
  • 🧠 Best Use of Gemma ($200 USD) — Powered by Google's open-weight google/gemma-3-12b-it model to extract requirements, calculate milestone hours, and synthesize contract-grade scope boundaries with zero training retention.
  • âš¡ Best Use of Backboard ($100 USD) — Utilizes the official backboard-sdk (BackboardClient) for multi-turn session continuity (thread_id), model routing, and structured JSON generation.
  • 🚀 Best Use of Render ($200 USD) — Fully deployed and managed on Render Cloud via an automated render.yaml Infrastructure-as-Code blueprint with continuous auto-deployment and automated health monitoring at /api/health.

Top comments (0)