Client work rarely goes off track in one dramatic moment.
More often, the margin starts disappearing in small messages:
- Can we add one more deliverable?
- The payment is still pending.
- The product is not available yet.
- The customer wants to postpone the order.
By the time someone notices, the team may already be spending time that was never agreed, or continuing work on an order that is no longer safe to deliver.
I am building ScopeGuard to help teams review those signals earlier.
What ScopeGuard does
ScopeGuard is an open-source, local-first tool for finance, sales, account and delivery teams. It compares an agreed scope document with later client communications.
It keeps two queues separate:
- Scope drift: a new deliverable, change or request that may be outside the agreed work.
- Commercial risk: cancellation, payment, product availability or customer-delay signals.
This distinction matters. A payment problem is not automatically a scope change, and it should not create a fake estimate of extra delivery hours. It still needs attention, but it belongs in a different review queue.
The early pilot
The current pilot works with local exports such as EML, Markdown, TXT and JSON. The browser processes the files locally, and the hosted version is private by default.
For a first test:
- Add a scope document.
- Add a redacted client communication export.
- Run the analysis.
- Review the Scope drift and Commercial risks filters.
- Decide whether the result would help your real workflow.
Who we want to hear from
I am especially interested in feedback from:
- finance teams reviewing margin or payment exposure;
- sales and account teams handling changes and cancellations;
- delivery teams checking whether a request is already covered;
- operators who currently do this review manually in email, spreadsheets or chat exports.
We are not looking for generic reactions. The useful feedback is concrete:
- Was the finding understandable?
- Was it a real risk or a false positive?
- What did the tool miss?
- Which source should come first: Gmail, Slack or WhatsApp?
- What would make this usable in a weekly finance or sales review?
How to join
The repository contains the local-first pilot and the test instructions:
https://github.com/HlinorAI/scopeguard
Please use the pilot feedback issue to share results or request hosted access:
https://github.com/HlinorAI/scopeguard/issues/9
Please use synthetic or anonymized examples only. Do not publish customer conversations, contracts, email addresses, phone numbers, payment details or credentials.
ScopeGuard is an early pilot, not a financial or legal decision system. Human review remains required.
If you work close to project margin, customer orders or delivery risk, I would genuinely value a short, critical test.
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