A personal dashboard to replace half the SaaS tools I pay for—and keep my engineering skills razor sharp.

For years, I’ve been juggling a mix of paid tools: task apps, time trackers, financial dashboards, note apps, client CRMs, document storage, and a couple AI tools. They each solve one problem, but none talk to each other. And as a full-time freelancer running a business, I found myself wanting one clean system—fast, elegant, centralized, and built exactly around how I work.

So I decided to build it.

A private, personal, beautifully-designed Freelancer Command Center, built with Laravel, Blade, MySQL, and a heavy emphasis on UI/UX fluency, animations, and responsiveness. Not meant for public release. Not multi-tenant. Not SaaS.

Just my own personal operating system.

And honestly? It’s the most fun I’ve had building something in a while.

🌤️ The Vision

I wanted it to feel like if Apple, Linear, and Notion had a kid: clean, frictionless, and fast. A “morning cockpit” where I can see everything that matters to me as a freelancer:

• Finances

• Tasks

• Notes

• Time tracking

• Client info

• Documents

• A small AI brain watching over all of it

The core philosophy is simple:

✔ Zero learning curve

✔ Minimal clicks

✔ Beautiful micro-interactions

✔ Fast on desktop & mobile

✔ A system that works exactly the way I work

This is the benefit of building for an audience of one.

🛠️ Tech Stack

This isn’t a toy project—I’m building it with the same standards I use in production:

Backend:

• Laravel 11+

• MySQL 8

• Queues, caching, filesystem, notifications

• Breeze/Fortify for authentication

Frontend:

• Blade components

• TailwindCSS

• Alpine.js

• Vanilla JavaScript

• Heroicons + Lottie animations

Design / UX:

• Clean, pastel color palette (light mode only)

• Smooth 100–250ms transitions

• Rounded edges (8–12px)

• Soft shadows

• Micro-animations on hover, click, drag, open

• Fluid modals, dropdowns, sliders, drawers

This entire system is a UX playground.
I’m intentionally pushing design polish to keep myself sharp.

🔥 Core Features I’m Building

Here’s what v1.0 will include (and yes, I’m already replacing paid services with this).

📊 1. Dashboard Overview

A morning “start screen” that shows:

• Today’s tasks

• Weekly deadlines

• Quick financial snapshot

• Time tracked

• Quick actions

• AI Task Brain: Suggestion of the Day

Soft gradients, animated cards, progress bars, and micro-lifts on hover. I want this to feel alive.

💰 2. Financial Hub

Tracks both personal and business money:

• Income

• Expenses

• Recurring bills

• Categories

• Receipt uploads

• Monthly & quarterly reporting

• Profit/loss

• AI category autofill

This replaces:
QuickBooks Self Employed, YNAB, and half of my spreadsheets.

Animated charts and slide-in drawers make it fun to use.

🎯 3. Tasks / To-Do Manager

My clean, fast alternative to Todoist/Asana/Linear:

• Lists

• Priorities

• Due dates

• Reminders

• Subtasks

• Drag-and-drop

• Quick-add

• AI: break tasks into steps or rewrite them

Animated checkboxes, priority pills, and accordion-style expansion keep it minimal but powerful.

📝 4. Notes & Knowledge Base

Notion-lite, but way faster:

• Rich text (Trix or TipTap)

• Tags

• Folders

• Pinning

• AI: convert notes → tasks

• Search

• Related notes

A side panel slides in and feels buttery smooth.

⏱️ 5. Time Tracking

A personal Clockify:

• Start/stop timer

• Assign to projects/clients/tasks

• Billable vs non-billable

• Weekly/monthly reporting

• Effective hourly rate

A tiny floating timer widget stays on screen—think macOS-style elegance.

📂 6. Document Vault

My personal Dropbox/Google Drive alternative:

• Folders

• Drag & drop upload

• Version history

• PDF previews

• AI-powered auto-tagging

Everything is searchable and fast.

👥 7. CRM Lite

Simple but effective client tracking:

• Contact storage

• Notes

• Interactions

• Follow-up reminders

• Status stages

Just what I need—nothing more.

📅 8. Calendar & Scheduling

A unified view of:

• Tasks

• Bills

• Events

Soft glowing highlights, snapping transitions, and a layout that feels like a modern app—not a 2010 calendar grid.

⚙️ 9. Quick Tools

Little utilities I constantly use:

• Proposal generator

• Invoice builder

• Contract filler

• Email writer

• Clipboard manager (snippets, responses, one-liners)

Replacing another handful of subscriptions.

🧠 10. AI Task Brain

This is the fun part.

It will:

• Suggest tasks

• Warn about deadlines

• Read notes for context

• Build schedules

• Analyze patterns

• Convert vague notes → actionable tasks

• Give end-of-day summaries

I’m treating this like my own private AI assistant, not a generic chat box.

🏗️ Architecture Overview

Clean, simple Laravel architecture:

app/
  Models/
  Services/
    AI/
    Finance/
    Time/
  Http/
    Controllers/
    Middleware/
    Requests/

Frontend is organized into component folders so everything is modular and reusable.

APIs:

• /api/tasks

• /api/time

• /api/finance

• /api/ai-brain

🎯 Build Phases

Phase 1 (MVP)

• Auth

• Dashboard shell

• Tasks

• Notes

• Basic financial tracking

Phase 2

• Time tracking

• Document vault

• CRM

• Calendar

Phase 3

• AI Task Brain

• Automation rules

• Deep analytics

Phase 4

• UI polishing

• Micro-interactions everywhere

• Custom theming

• Import/export

🧩 Why I’m Building This

Two reasons:

1. It keeps my engineering muscles sharp

Laravel, UX animations, AI tooling, data modeling—this is everything I enjoy building.

2. It eliminates several monthly SaaS subscriptions

This replaces:

• Todoist

• Clockify

• YNAB/Quickbooks Self-Employed

• Dropbox

• Notion

• CRM tools

• Email writing tools

• Clipboard managers

All in one clean personal system.

📌 Final Thoughts

This isn’t a product—it’s a personal operating system.
A dashboard built for one user with specific needs: me.

But the act of building it?
That’s what keeps my craft sharp.

I’ll post updates as I build it out—screenshots, UX demos, and dev notes.
And who knows… maybe someday this evolves into a tool others can use.