Tooling for technical freelancers in DACH.CLI and web companion. EU-VAT, DATEV, and audit-trail. Local on your machine.

Three profiles. One product. Two interfaces.

Technical freelancers in DACH with EU clients. You write your own invoices. Checking VAT-IDs is tedious. The DATEV export costs you Sundays.

Same engine, two interfaces. If you live in the terminal, you stay in the terminal. If you want clicks, you get clicks. Price stays the same.

Receipt-Tracker. EU-VAT without the Sunday spreadsheets.

A local tool that writes your invoices for EU clients. Reverse-charge is handled cleanly. VAT-IDs are checked against the VIES database. The DATEV export fits on the first try.

// what it does

• Writes invoices the Finanzamt accepts. Also for EU clients under reverse-charge rules.
• Checks VAT-IDs against the EU VIES database. So a fake ID doesn't burn you eighteen months later.
• Exports your books in DATEV format. Your tax advisor gets exactly what they ask for. You stop being the middleman.
• Keeps a local audit-trail. If the Finanzamt knocks, you have receipts.
• Runs offline on macOS or Linux. No account. No subscription. No cloud. Your client data stays with you.

// what you get

• A single download (ZIP, about 8 MB including the GUI launcher).
• A license key bound to your email address.
• All v1.x updates free and permanent.
• 30 days of email support with a reply within 2 h CET.
• Access to the customer dashboard at app.lateshift.dev for downloads, license, and invoices.

// what you don't get

• Consulting or training. I sell a product, not my time.
• Custom modifications. The code is MIT-licensed. Fork it yourself if you need to.
• A Windows build (not yet). macOS and Linux come first. Windows follows if the community asks.

// how buying works

1. Click "Buy" once the product is ready. Polar.sh handles checkout, VAT, and receipt.
2. Card or PayPal. Polar is EU Merchant of Record. You don't need to blindly trust a single-dev project.
3. Download and license key arrive by email. Installation in five minutes, then your first compliant invoice.

Launch target: August 2026, if discovery this week confirms that five people pre-commit at 79€ in writing.

The inner thread. Locked for life at 29€ per month.

A paid email thread plus private area for technical freelancers. You get new products before everyone else, the build-notes behind them, and a reply window for your questions.

// what's in it

• New products one week before public launch.
• Monthly post-mortem. What shipped. What broke. What I learned.
• Quarterly bookkeeping deep-dive. Templates, gotchas, and audit stories from real freelance clients.
• Questions answered. 2 h reply window CET on weekdays.
• Founding-100 price lock. 29€ per month permanently, even when the price later goes up to 39€.

// what's not in it

• No chat group. No Discord. No Slack. No daily standup.
• No video calls or Zoom meetings. I answer in writing.
• No access to me for custom work. The vault is asynchronous and written. Tightly scoped.

Every decision. Every named failure. Dated.

No roadmap blog. A decision log. What broke. Where I changed my mind. Timestamps in CET.

• may 06nightbuild.dev was taken. night.build too. lateshift.dev locked instead.
• may 06CLI binary renamed nb → lsh. Mirrors the brand stem and avoids the ls collision.
• may 06First product flipped. Build-Logger killed as a paid product and demoted to free v1.1. EU-Receipt-Tracker becomes P1 at 79€.
• may 09Voice spec frozen. 17 banned phrases. 8-point pre-publish gate.
• may 10Hosting pivot. Hetzner CX22 on standby. Strato Hosting Plus active for the static site. Saves 4.51€ per month.
• may 10First version went live. SSL issued by Sectigo. Voice-check 0 hits. Deploy via paramiko SFTP.
• may 14Strategy pivot — path B. ICP expanded from solo-dev to technical freelancers (devs, tech-designers, and freelance CTOs). Product gains a GUI launcher. Launch slides from June to August.
• may 14Architecture blueprint done. Backend stack: Next.js with Node, PostgreSQL, Polar.sh, and Resend. Deployable on Hetzner CX22. Subagent dispatch plan ready.
• may 15Gate deferred. 0 DMs sent after 9 days of infrastructure work. Sat may 23 as new deadline. Seven real days of discovery instead of pseudo-validation tomorrow.
• may 23Discovery gate (new). 5 written pre-commits or pivot. Answer comes next Saturday.

Email only. No checkout. No commitment.

Join the waitlist if you want the founding link when Receipt-Tracker ships. You get it before the public. If you join the vault at launch, you keep the locked price.

Documented limits.

I'd rather lose you here than oversell.

• I don't take freelance gigs from website visitors. Apple has 40 hours a week.
• I don't replace Lexoffice or Sevdesk. I fill the gaps the big tools leave for EU-VAT edge-cases.
• I don't promise dates harder than "August, probably." If it slips, you see why in the build log.
• I don't run a forum or Discord. Asynchronous email or nothing.
• I don't pivot to luxury branding. Clean and dev-coded, or close the tab.