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master-ai/docs/for-freelancers.md
mawkone 6b8862ef2b feat(api): comprehensive QA hardening — security gates, chat improvements, beta scaffolds
Closes checklist items F-01..F-06, D-01..D-28, S-01..S-10, C-01..C-07,
B-01..B-07, R-01..R-02, O-03.

Security (28 deletions + 10 auth gates):
- Delete 28 unauthenticated debug/cursor/firebase/test routes
- Gate ai/chat, ai/conversation, context/summarize, work-completed with withTenantProject/withAuth
- Add HMAC-SHA256 signature verification to webhooks/coolify
- Switch all admin secret comparisons to timingSafeStringEq

Foundations (lib/server/*):
- api-handler.ts: withAuth, withTenantProject, withWorkspace, withAdminSecret, withRateLimit
- logger.ts: structured request-scoped logging with turnId
- audit-log.ts: writeAuditLog helper + audit_log table
- rate-limit.ts: Postgres sliding window rate limiter
- coolify-webhook.ts: verifyCoolifySignature
- timing-safe.ts: timingSafeStringEq

Chat hardening (chat/route.ts):
- MAX_TOOL_ROUNDS 15 → 8 (C-01)
- Loop detection: hard-break at 3 identical fingerprints (was 5) (C-02)
- Add 6-consecutive-tool-call hard-break (C-02)
- Mode: respond first, act second prompt block (C-03)
- SSE heartbeat every 25s via setInterval (C-04)
- Per-tool 45s timeout via Promise.race (C-05)
- turnId per-turn UUID for log correlation (C-06)
- Recovery fires when roundsSinceText >= 4 (C-07)
- SSE plan event on plan_task_add/edit (B-05)

Beta features:
- invites table + GET/POST /api/invites (P4.8)
- invites/[token] validate + redeem (P4.8)
- fs_project_dev_servers table + lib/server/dev-server-state.ts (P6.B1)
- fs_project_secrets table + CRUD routes (P6.D2)
- lib/integrations/brief-extract.ts (P3.7)

Documentation:
- app/api/ROUTES.md: full route map with auth + tenant
2026-05-17 19:17:22 -07:00

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For Freelancers (rewritten)

You're the craftsman of the AI economy. Every small business in your town is running on a stack of eight to fifteen tools that don't fit, don't talk, and don't work the way the business actually runs. The owner is gluing it together with spreadsheets and their own time. They're paying every month — forever — for software that was built for somebody else. They don't need another integration. They don't need another dashboard. They need one tool, built for their business. You're who builds it.

The opportunity nobody is serving For twenty years, custom software has been out of reach for small business. Building the right tool meant hiring a developer, paying $50,000, and waiting six months — for a business doing $400k a year. Nobody could afford it. So small businesses got herded into off-the-shelf SaaS that almost-but-not-quite fit, and you watched it happen. That's over. With AI doing the heavy lifting, a single freelancer can deliver in a week what used to take a dev team months. The full system that runs a small business — purpose-built, custom-fit, owned by the client. Not a plugin. Not a dashboard. The actual software the business runs on. The work is real. The market is enormous. And almost nobody is doing it yet.

Why this is the work to be doing You can keep grinding for SaaS companies. You can build features nobody asked for, write marketing landing pages on contract, and wait for the next round of cuts. Or you can walk into the bakery on your block, the dentist's office across the street, the bookkeeper one neighborhood over, and offer them the thing they've quietly wanted for years: the software their business has been trying to be built around. You'd be the most valuable person they know. Small business owners are not picky. They are hungry. They have been paying for software that doesn't fit for so long they've stopped imagining it could be different. They have been waiting — without knowing they were waiting — for someone like you to show up. You're who shows up.

What the work actually looks like You meet a local business. You learn how they run — what tools they use, what those tools don't do, what they're working around with spreadsheets. You describe what they need to Vibn. The AI builds it. You shape it, refine it, polish it, hand it over. The most common projects:

A complete front-of-house system for a salon, med-spa, or studio — bookings, customer notes, packages, schedules, payments, marketing — replacing four or five subscriptions with one custom build A custom shop management system for a trade business — jobs, crew, scheduling, quotes, invoices, customer history — built for how that specific business runs A unified client portal for a service business — bookings, invoices, communications, document sharing, reviews — branded to the client, owned by the client A full studio management system — classes, members, packages, attendance, marketing — purpose-built for one studio's exact model A back-office operating system for a small operation that's outgrown spreadsheets but is never going to be big enough for "real" enterprise software Custom-built replacements for the SaaS subscriptions that almost work — rebuilt to fit perfectly, no monthly rent, owned forever

You're not building features. You're building the system that runs the business.

A new kind of business This is not contract dev work. It's not agency work. It's something else. You're not selling time. You're selling outcomes. You're not building specs. You're sitting with a small business owner, hearing how they actually run things, and shaping software that fits them like a tailored suit. You hand over the keys when you're done. The client owns it forever. You get paid once, well, and move on. Vibn does the work of an engineering team. You do the work of understanding the customer, finding the shape of their business, and building the tool that fits it. That's the part the AI can't do — yet, maybe ever. It's the part where craft lives. The skill that matters now is taste. Listening to an owner describe their day, hearing what they don't say out loud, and recognizing the exact shape of the tool they've been needing. That's a craft. That's something to build a career on.

How you make this a business A few things freelancers are doing well:

Pick a niche. Trades. Med-spas. Restaurants. Service businesses. Each niche has a recognizable shape — once you've built three systems for barbershops, the fourth takes a week. Look for the spreadsheet. Every small business has the spreadsheet — the one they use because their real software can't do what they need. That spreadsheet is the brief. Whatever it does is the system you're building. Charge for the outcome, not the hours. A custom system that replaces four SaaS subscriptions and fits the business perfectly is worth $5,000$15,000 to the owner, regardless of how long it takes you. Don't price the work — price the result. Build local, build a portfolio. Three businesses in your town becomes a case study. A case study becomes referrals. Referrals become a full pipeline. You don't need to scale beyond your community to make a great living.

Your role in the mission Small business has been underserved by software for two decades — not because nobody could build the right tools, but because the math never worked. AI changes the math. The fix isn't another SaaS company. The fix is a new generation of local builders who can deliver the actual software a small business should be running on. Custom-fit. Hand-delivered. Owned by the business. That's you. You're not just building tools. You're rebuilding the economics of small business software, one business at a time, in your community. That's a real career. A real craft. A real way to spend the next ten years. The work is here. The businesses are waiting. Let's go build. [ Start your first project → ] Free to start · No credit card · Built in Canada