This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle
What I Built
ScopeLock is a side-hustle tool for freelancers and small agencies who keep losing money to scope creep.
You paste your statement of work and a client thread (or import Slack JSON, or drop a voice memo). ScopeLock:
- Labels each client ask as in-scope vs out-of-scope
- Cites language from your SOW
- Drafts a professional boundary reply
- Runs a Side hustle cockpit: scope-creep score, TabPFN-estimated change-order hours, rush-fee math, and a client-ready change order you can export as Markdown
Who would pay? Solo devs, designers, and fractional engineers billing fixed-fee or milestone projects — anyone who needs receipts before saying yes to “just one more thing.”
Demo
Live app: https://scopelock.smriad.tech
Quick path on the demo: load samples → Index SOW → Analyze scope → open the change-order panel → Listen (ElevenLabs reads the suggested reply).
Production smoke test (Apple Sign-In creep sample): Mastra mode, high risk, TabPFN 15.3h, change-order ~$1,913 at $125/hr, voice MP3 generated, history stored in MongoDB.
curl -s https://scopelock.smriad.tech/api/health
Code
ScopeLock
Local-first AI that turns freelance scope creep into paid change orders.
Built for Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle.
Production (Render + smriad.tech)
- Deploy with
render.yaml→ servicescopelock - DNS: CNAME
scopelock→*.onrender.com -
export RENDER_API_KEY=rnd_... && npm run sync:render(reads.env.local)
Live URL: https://scopelock.smriad.tech
Local dev
cp .env.example .env.local # fill partner keys
npm install
npm run dev
Optional: docker compose up -d for local pgvector; local Ollama for embeddings.
Open http://localhost:3000 — samples preloaded.
How it works
- Paste your statement of work and optionally Index into pgvector (embeds chunks with Ollama + stores in Postgres).
- Paste a client thread.
- Analyze scope — Ollama returns structured JSON: verdicts, SOW citations, reply draft, change-order line items.
If Ollama is offline, the app uses a demo analysis so you can still record a video (set DEMO_MODE=true on cloud hosts).
Stack
Layer
Tech
MIT licensed. render.yaml Blueprint, GitHub Actions CI, and npm run smoke against production.
How I Built It
Open Gemma 3 (google/gemma-3-4b-it) is the reasoning core — on Render it runs via OpenRouter; locally you can point at Ollama instead. Mastra orchestrates the scope agent and workflow so analysis stays structured (verdicts, citations, reply, line items).
| Layer | Tech |
|---|---|
| Host |
Render (free tier Blueprint, /api/health) |
| LLM | Gemma 3 (open weights via OpenRouter / Ollama) |
| Agents | Mastra agent + workflow |
| RAG | Tiger Data (pgvector + hybrid FTS on SOW chunks) |
| History / fallback | MongoDB Atlas |
| Hours model | TabPFN 3.5 regression on bundled project history CSV |
| Voice in / out | ElevenLabs transcribe + TTS on the reply |
| Market context | SerpApi rate snippets |
| Memory | Backboard for recurring scope patterns |
| Tone polish | Tinker sampler on the boundary reply |
| Tracing | Sentry spans on the analyze path |
| CI | GitHub Actions (Copilot-friendly workflow) |
| URL |
smriad.tech — scopelock.smriad.tech via Cloudflare Worker → Render |
The analyze path: index SOW → retrieve chunks → agent JSON → TabPFN hours → optional Tinker pass → persist to /history.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
Freelancers cannot paste client threads into random closed chatbots and hope for enforceable output. Open-weight Gemma keeps the model swappable (cloud API today, laptop tomorrow). TabPFN turns your historical projects into hour estimates without training a custom regressor. Tiger + Mongo keep SOW and analysis history under infrastructure you control — important when the product’s whole job is contractual evidence.
A closed API could draft an email; it would not give me a credible, reproducible stack for “show me the SOW clause and the dollars” that I can self-host and audit.
My Agent Session
Implement ScopeLock for Hacktoberfest Week 2 Side Hustle: open-weight AI that turns freelance scope creep into paid change orders.
Scaffolded Next.js app with Mastra agent, Gemma via OpenRouter on Render, Tiger pgvector RAG, MongoDB history, TabPFN hours, ElevenLabs voice, and side-hustle cockpit UI.
Custom domain scopelock.smriad.tech was not resolving via registrar CNAME while Cloudflare nameservers were authoritative.
Deployed a Cloudflare Worker proxy (same pattern as 29.smriad.tech) with custom_domain=true. Removed conflicting DNS rows, added Worker DNS record, verified HTTPS.
Draft DEV submission post for Week 2 challenge.
Created DEV draft with live demo link, partner stack table, and prize categories; production URL https://scopelock.smriad.tech
Full session on DEV — build, Render deploy, Cloudflare Worker DNS, live smoke test. Make Public on the session page if the embed is blank in preview.
Prize Categories
Featured: Best Use of Render · Gemma · TabPFN · Tinker
Partner: Backboard · ElevenLabs · Entire · GitHub Copilot · Mastra · MongoDB Atlas · Sentry Agent Tracing · SerpApi · Tiger Data · Best Use of a .tech Domain
(Not entered: Arduino, DigitalOcean, Temporal — no hardware or second long-running worker in this build.)
Thanks for reading — try the sample thread and tell me if the change-order math matches how you would bill.
Top comments (1)
Scope creep is a huge issue for freelancers—love seeing more side-hustle tools built around contract protection!