
Apply HN: Moonlighter – Automatically track projects from computer usage - pbnjay
Moonlighter - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moonlighter.io
Automatically track projects from computer usage<p>Moonlighter frees you from using a manual time tracker. You no longer have to remember to start&#x2F;stop the timer, switch projects, or annotate the current task. It pulls information from your computer (file edits, open applications, browser URLs, etc) and connected services (github, gmail, google docs, etc) and uses machine learning to learn which activities are a part of which projects. All tracking is opt-in only, optionally fully encrypted (although this degrades some features of the user experience).<p>Right now the focus is time tracking, with plans to expand into project management&#x2F;reporting tools.<p>Why (did I build this):
I had a day job (well I was a grad student), moonlighting on the side to pay the bills. I always had trouble remembering to track my time accurately, and even more trouble estimating hours for a project. Although I don&#x27;t bill hourly anymore, I know that accurately tracking my time is essential to preparing a good software estimate.<p>How (are you going to make money):
Initial market and customer interviews are freelance developers&#x2F;designers, although I&#x27;ve had really good discussions from a number of lawyers.<p>It uses a B2B SaaS subscription model. The Price will start off lower than advertised and increase as more features are added to the web application.<p>Where (are the competitors):
RescueTime is probably the most closest competitor. They have a lot of similar data, but it is less granular and not currently used for project tracking.<p>DeskTime is similar but also granular, and especially invasive for individual contributors.<p>There are plenty of other time trackers&#x2F;invoicing tools in this space, but many of them simply give the problem a pretty face: Harvest, Toggl, and myriad others. Getting detailed data for automatic project&#x2F;task annotation and project estimation will be a big undertaking for these.<p>[2k char limit, more below]
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pbnjay
Who (built this):

\- Jeremy Jay (that's me!), I have a PhD in Comp Sci/Bioinformatics, but also
do freelance software development. My research covers data integration and
information/graph theory analysis. My freelance work has ranged from large
software system integrations, a few different startup MVPs (both successful
and not). So I have experience with the problems of freelancers/small teams,
and experience in data analysis to solve these issues when I have the data
available.

\- [Need a biz dev/sales person here] - Freelance has given me some experience
in this arena, but having a cofounder here would be much better.

When (did I start):

\- I currently have a working prototype for OSX and trimmed down prototypes
for Linux and Windows. These are installed desktop apps which send data to the
main web application.

\- I've been working on this part-time for essentially a year. Did a soft beta
launch last year, but it surfaced some architectural issues when users and
data variety were outside of my expectations. So I'm using that data to
improve things and chugging away to get it shaped up for a beta relaunch soon.

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billhendricksjr
What is your plan for finding a cofounder?

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pbnjay
No real plan. I'd prefer someone passionate about the subject over someone
available right now. So I'm keeping my ears open if the right person comes
along.

For now, I think it's more important to focus on making a great product and
start bringing in some revenue. Like I said, I can make ends meet in this
area, but it'd be nice to have someone dedicated to that side of the house.

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msrpotus
This actually sounds pretty good. While most freelancers really shouldn't
charge by the hour, this could be a good solution to a real problem.

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pbnjay
I agree. That's why I'm not really thinking about the invoicing angle like
some of the other tracking apps seem to do. Making accurate project estimates
(and measuring current progress) is at least as important and relevant to a
lot more people than just freelancers.

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JayNeely
1) What user inputs _do_ you need, for this to work well, and what's the
process for getting them?

2) Let's say I open up Gmail, spend about an hour writing 5 emails to 4
different people about 3 different projects. Could you walk me through how
Moonlighter identifies how much time I just spent on each project?

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pbnjay
1) Other than turning it on and allowing tracking, not much. There's a way to
annotate the active project (e.g. pick from a drop-down of recent projects).
Although after enough data is collected it's able to infer these without
manual input. The web application has a place to review the inferred projects
and clean them up if necessary (cleaning up makes future inferences better).

2) The Gmail integration is still in development, but the basic idea is that
if you've emailed someone about a project in the past, it'll use that
relationship to guess which project you're working on at the moment. The more
supporting information it has (e.g. open documents or other stuff you've
looked at recently) the better these guesses are.

It does all this on a minute-by-minute basis, so even if you're sitting and
thinking about something for a few minutes it'll pick up the little spurts of
activity and put the whole block of time into one chunk of activity.

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troyclark
Does this offer integration with something like Harvest? I'm so integrated
with their system now that automating time tracking to their service would be
absolutely fantastic.

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pbnjay
Integrating to various invoicing platforms is certainly on the radar. Harvest,
Freshbooks, and Quickbooks are definitely at the top of the list.

We'll start with a CSV export that will work with these platforms, then
further down the line do full API integrations.

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davemel37
Love this idea! Would love to beta test it.

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pbnjay
Feel free to provide your email on the site! (if you haven't already)

Do you have any questions or concerns? Any feedback is definitely helpful for
shaping the product.

