Hubstaff

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

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Build the time tracking I actually need instead of Hubstaff — and read this first, because half of what this product sells is a decision rather than a feature.

**The monitoring half is the part to think hardest about.** Screenshots of somebody's screen every ten minutes, activity levels from keystroke counts, location logging: in much of Europe this needs a lawful basis, a documented assessment and often a works council agreement, and everywhere it changes what it is like to work somewhere. Build the timer. Add surveillance only if you can say out loud, to the people being watched, exactly why — and let them see everything you collect about them.

What is straightforward to build:

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify, server-rendered HTML with a little vanilla JS
- SQLite through better-sqlite3, WAL mode
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- entries: id, person_id, project_id, task_id, started_at, ended_at, source, note, edited_by, edit_reason
- projects, tasks, and rates: person_id, client_id, effective_from, cost_cents, bill_cents
- **Every edit recorded with who and why, and the original kept.** In many countries a working-time record is a legal document, and one that can be silently changed is worthless to an inspector and to the employee

THE TIMER
- Start and stop from anywhere in one action, and a weekly grid for entering time from memory on Friday — which is how time is actually recorded
- Detect idle: if nothing happens for a while, ask what to do with those minutes rather than deciding. **Silently discarding time is how people stop trusting a timer**
- Never round. If a task took 7 minutes it took 7 minutes

WHAT REPLACES THE MONITORING
- Activity does not need screenshots. **Time against estimate, per task, is the number a manager actually wants**, and it is collected without watching anybody
- If somebody is over-running, that shows up in a day. If they are struggling, that is a conversation, not a screenshot

IF YOU BUILD MONITORING ANYWAY
- Tell people before it starts, in words, and record that you did
- Let every person see their own data in full, always, one click, and export it
- Blur screenshots by default, allow pausing during personal time, and never capture outside working hours
- A retention that actually deletes, measured in weeks

WHAT COMES OUT OF IT
- Hours per project and per person, and profitability from the two rate columns — **cost and bill are different numbers, and using the bill rate for both makes every project look profitable**
- Export for payroll and invoicing rather than becoming either

WHAT MATTERS MOST
The edit trail and the idle prompt. One makes the record defensible; the other makes it accurate — and both matter more than anything a screenshot shows.