Bonsai

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Build the freelance admin system I actually need instead of Bonsai — with one part left alone on purpose.

**Do not write your own contract templates.** Bonsai's are drafted by lawyers for specific jurisdictions, and a generated contract that fails when it matters costs more than every subscription you will ever avoid. Get templates from a lawyer once, store them, and build everything around them.

What is worth building:

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify, server-rendered HTML with a little vanilla JS
- SQLite through better-sqlite3, WAL mode
- Playwright or Typst for PDFs
- A payment processor for anything involving money moving
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- clients, projects: id, client_id, name, rate_cents, budget_cents, currency
- proposals: id, client_id, body_md, total_cents, sent_at, decided_at, outcome
- contracts: id, project_id, template_id, body_md, path, sha256, sent_at
- signatures: id, contract_id, signer, method, evidence_json, signed_at — **name, time, IP hash, document hash and method; that bundle is what makes a signature defensible**
- time_entries: id, project_id, minutes, on_date, note, is_billable, invoiced_in
- invoices: id, client_id, number, issued_on, due_on, total_cents, sent_at, paid_at
- Money in integer minor units, always, with the currency stored

THE CHAIN THAT MAKES THIS WORTH BUILDING
- Proposal accepted creates the project; the project's contract is generated from a template with the agreed terms; tracked time becomes invoice lines; the invoice carries the project's reference
- **Nothing is typed twice**, which is the actual complaint that makes freelancers buy this
- Every step stores the document it produced with its hash, because a regenerated contract that differs from the signed one is not evidence

INVOICING PROPERLY
- Sequential numbering with no gaps, per year, generated in a transaction. **A tax authority notices gaps**
- An invoice is never edited after it is sent: a correction is a credit note
- Time entries locked once invoiced, so history cannot change under a bill already sent
- Late reminders on a schedule, polite and automatic, because chasing is the job everybody avoids

WHAT TO RENT
- Payments. Use a processor and record the confirmation from a verified webhook — a paid flag set by a browser callback is a paid flag anybody can set
- Tax filing. Export what your accountant needs; do not compute what you owe

WHAT MATTERS MOST
Gapless invoice numbers, locked invoiced time, and lawyer-written templates. The first two keep the books defensible; the third keeps the contracts worth having.