ScopeCraft: Cinematic Proposals for Freelancers, Powered by Open-Weight AI

SIDDHIKA K — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 16:38:39 +0000

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

## What I Built

ScopeCraft is a cinematic, editorial-style web studio that turns rough client briefs into structured, persuasive project proposals using open-weight language models. It also protects freelancers from the problems that usually come after the proposal is signed.

The problem: Freelancers lose money in two places. First, vague briefs hide risks: unclear hosting, missing assets, open-ended deadlines and fuzzy budgets. Second, once the project starts, "just one small change" requests quietly expand the scope for free.

Who would pay for it: Solo developers, designers, brand consultants and small agencies who send proposals regularly. One avoided scope-creep dispute or one better-won project more than covers the cost of a tool like this.

Core features:

Smart Brief Gap Detector: Scans an intake brief for commercial and operational risks, such as hosting ambiguity, unspecified copy and photography dependencies, missing turnaround times and unclear budgets. A one-click clause injection strengthens the brief before it goes to the client.
Scope-Creep Sentinel: Compares a new client request against the contracted proposal and classifies it as Within Scope, Boundary / Grey Area or Out of Scope. It estimates the schedule impact and change-order fee, cites the relevant proposal sections and exclusions, and drafts a polite, boundary-protecting email reply that can be copied in one click.
Living Project Scope Map: An interactive traceability matrix linking Client Need → Deliverable → Milestone → Acceptance Test → Measurable Outcome. It updates as proposal sections are edited and tracks verification status (Defined, In Review, Verified).
Professional PDF Export: Generates client-ready, multi-page PDFs with jsPDF across nine sections (Executive Summary through Next Steps), with an ivory, charcoal and forest-green design and dynamic page numbering.

The app includes three demo projects so the full workflow can be explored right away: a website redesign for an outfitter, a brand identity for a venture fund, and an e-commerce store for an artisan ceramics studio.

Demo

Live app: https://scopecraft-cinematic-ai-freelancer-proposal-studi.ai.studio

The app works out of the box in a clearly labeled demo mode that needs no API key. Adding a free open-weight inference key switches it to live model output.

Code

https://github.com/veryVanshika801/ScopeCraft-

How I Built It

Open-weight AI: ScopeCraft is designed around open-weight foundation models such as Meta Llama 3.3 70B, Mistral NeMo and Qwen 2.5. The inference provider is configurable through environment variables:

Groq Cloud (recommended, free tier) with llama-3.3-70b-versatile
Hugging Face Serverless with meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
Together AI with meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct-Turbo
Custom with any OpenAI-compatible base URL

Changing providers or models takes a few lines in .env.local, with no code changes (OPEN_WEIGHT_PROVIDER, OPEN_WEIGHT_MODEL, OPEN_WEIGHT_BASE_URL).

Architecture: The frontend is built with Vite and TypeScript, with a lightweight server layer (server.ts and an api/ directory) that keeps the API key off the client. jsPDF handles the PDF export. The project is deployable to Vercel, and local setup is npm install && npm run dev.

Design: Most freelancer tools look like generic dashboards. I wanted proposals to feel like a finished documentary piece, so I used editorial typography, a warm ivory and charcoal palette and forest-green accents.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

Freelancer briefs contain private client details, budgets and strategy. Open-weight models changed what I could build:

No vendor lock-in: The same app runs on Groq, Hugging Face, Together or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so I can move wherever it's cheapest, fastest or most private.
Cost that suits a side hustle: A free-tier open-weight setup means a freelancer can use the tool without a heavy subscription or a pricing change breaking it.
Control over data: Because the models are open, the same app can be pointed at a self-hosted endpoint for clients who need that.
Transparency and room to improve: Open weights can be inspected, tuned and extended, and an open-source repo lets other freelancers fork it, adapt the prompts to their niche and contribute back.

A closed API would have tied the product's cost, behavior and privacy to someone else's decisions. Open innovation let me build a tool that freelancers can own and rely on.

DEV Community: SIDDHIKA K

ScopeCraft: Cinematic Proposals for Freelancers, Powered by Open-Weight AI

Demo

Code

How I Built It

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?