Atelier

An open-source, self-hostable business operating system for developer-freelancers and small dev studios: clients, projects, time tracking and invoicing in one connected flow.

Status: pre-alpha

Early but real: the connected flow works end to end. What exists today:

• Clients with contacts, default rates, VAT numbers and an activity thread
• Projects and tasks with a kanban board and list views
• Time tracking: start/stop timers, manual entries, a weekly timesheet
• Invoicing: generate lines from unbilled time (grouped your way) or add fixed amounts, multi-currency with ECB conversion fixed per line, standard/zero-rated/reverse-charge VAT, gapless per-year numbering, draft/sent/paid/overdue lifecycle, PDF export
• The money math is fixture-tested against a signed-off billing spec (BILLING-SPEC.md) - every rule has a hand-verified expected output
• Auth: email/password (Better Auth), optional Google SSO via env, small-team memberships; everything scoped per business
• One-command self-host via docker-compose, demo seed included

Not yet: proposals, recurring invoices, payment collection, importers, a client portal. The design is mid-pass; screens are functional and consistent but still being refined.

The README will track honest feature status as things actually land.

Self-host (one command)

Requires Docker.

git clone https://github.com/PunterDigital/Atelier.git
cd Atelier
docker compose up

This starts Postgres, applies database migrations, and serves the app on http://localhost:3000. Defaults are fine for trying it locally; set POSTGRES_PASSWORD (see .env.example) before exposing it anywhere.

Local development

Requires Node 24+, pnpm 10+, and a Postgres instance (or use docker compose up postgres).

pnpm install
cp .env.example .env   # point DATABASE_URL at your Postgres
pnpm db:migrate
pnpm db:seed           # optional demo data (demo@atelier.local / atelier-demo)
pnpm dev

Quality gate (all must pass before any commit):

pnpm typecheck
pnpm lint
pnpm test
pnpm test:billing
pnpm build

Licence

AGPL-3.0. You can self-host, modify, and redistribute freely; if you run a modified version as a network service, you must offer its source to your users. Chosen so the project stays genuinely open.