Time Doctor

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Copy the prompt for Claude CodeCopy the prompt for CodexCopy the prompt for Cursor

Copy

Build the time tracking I actually need instead of Time Doctor — with the same warning this category always deserves.

**The productivity score is the part to be sceptical about, not just careful with.** Classifying applications as productive or not measures whether somebody's work looks like the list you wrote, which is a different thing from whether they did it well. A developer reading documentation, a designer browsing references and somebody thinking with their hands off the keyboard all score badly. Teams that manage by this number get the behaviour it rewards.

So: build the timer, build the reporting, and if you build classification at all, treat it as a prompt for a conversation rather than a rating.

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify, server-rendered HTML
- 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
- edits: id, entry_id, before_json, after_json, actor, reason, at — **the original is never overwritten**
- projects, tasks, rates with cost and bill separately
- If you collect it: activity: id, person_id, app, title_bucket, seconds, at

THE TIMER, WHICH IS THE ACTUAL PRODUCT
- One action to start and stop, from anywhere
- A weekly grid — days across, tasks down — because that is where time is really entered
- Idle detection that asks rather than decides
- No rounding, ever

REPORTING WORTH HAVING
- Hours per project and person, over any period
- Time against estimate per task. **This is the number that answers 'is this going well', and it needs no surveillance to collect**
- Profitability from cost and bill rates, which are different numbers
- A weekly summary to each person of their own time, before anybody else sees it

IF YOU COLLECT APPLICATION ACTIVITY
- Store a coarse bucket, never window titles. A window title contains document names, customer names and private matters
- **Every person sees their own data in full and can export it**, and nobody else sees more than they do about themselves
- Announce it before it starts, record that you did, and allow pausing
- Delete it on a stated schedule measured in weeks, with a sweeper that runs
- Under GDPR this is monitoring of employees: it needs a lawful basis and usually an assessment. **That is a decision for the business, not a setting in an application**

WHAT MATTERS MOST
Time against estimate, and never storing window titles. The first gives managers what they were really after; the second is the line between a timer and surveillance.