Moonance

Inspiration

Ranchers and farmers manage some of the most financially complex operations in any industry. Seasonal cash flows, commodity-priced inventory, weather-dependent income, and multi-year capital decisions are all part of a typical week. Yet the tools available to them were built for small retail businesses. QuickBooks doesn't know what a cow-calf pair is worth. Standard banking apps don't understand that your income arrives in three big chunks a year. Spreadsheets break and take your data with them.

We wanted to build something that treated agricultural operators as the sophisticated business people they are, with software that speaks their language from day one.

What it does

Moonance is a financial management platform built exclusively for ranchers and farmers. It gives operators a clear, real-time picture of their financial position through four core areas:

• Core Financial Management -- income tracking, expense tracking, and live herd valuation with a formula-based calculator that updates as market prices change
• Profit Optimization -- medium-term profitability projections and data-driven recommendations generated directly from the user's logged income, expenses, and herd data
• Weather Intelligence -- live National Weather Service forecasts, active alert monitoring, and ranch-specific impact notes that translate incoming weather into actionable operational guidance
• A clean, persistent dashboard -- all data saved to a user account, so nothing is lost between sessions

How we built it

The frontend is built in SvelteKit with Svelte 5, using SvelteKit's experimental remote functionality for a gRPC-like experience. We designed a custom dark palette rooted in soil and amber tones, paired with Lora Serif and DM Mono typefaces to give the product a premium but grounded feel.

The backend uses Drizzle ORM against a PostgreSQL database. Authentication is handled through a custom-built Auth0 integration to make the most of SvelteKit's server-side rendering, enabling ownership-scoped queries on every read and write so users only ever see their own data.

Weather data comes from the National Weather Service public API, which requires no key and covers the entire continental United States. Location is resolved through the browser geolocation API, with a manual coordinate fallback for users in low-connectivity environments.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was scope discipline. The feature space for agricultural fintech is enormous and it was genuinely difficult to resist building toward all of it at once. We formalized a five-phase priority structure early on (ranging from "must haves" to "okay if we don't get to") and kept returning to it whenever a new idea surfaced.

On the technical side, Svelte 5's runes system required a mindset shift from the reactivity model we were used to. Plain let variables no longer trigger re-renders, which caused several silent bugs early on where UI state simply stopped updating. Once we understood that $state() and $derived() are the correct primitives, everything clicked into place.

Getting the NWS API to return useful, ranch-specific context rather than raw forecast data also took iteration. The weather data is only valuable if it tells a rancher something actionable, so we built a translation layer that maps forecast conditions and alert types to livestock and field operations guidance.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Honestly, just getting the project from idea to reality is something we are proud of. Taking a concept scribbled out as a prompt and turning it into a working, styled, navigable application with real pages and real data is no small thing.

Getting authentication working was a genuine win. Having users be able to sign in and have their data tied to their account, rather than just floating in a session, makes Moonance feel like a real product rather than a prototype.

Getting the backend up and running is the other one. Standing up a database, writing the schema, creating the API routes, and watching data actually persist between page loads was the moment it stopped feeling like a demo.

What we learned

Building for a specialized industry requires you to earn the domain knowledge before writing a single line of code. We spent meaningful time understanding cattle / farm treatment, pricing conventions, livestock market seasonality, and how drought indices work before the data models made sense. The schema reflects that learning in concrete ways, like storing herd valuation as a calculation rather than a stored value, because market prices change daily.

We also learned that the most important product decisions are about what to leave out. A focused tool that does five things well is more valuable to a time-poor rancher than a comprehensive platform that requires an onboarding call to understand.

What's next for Moonance

Tax estimation and optimization tools tailored to agricultural tax rules, paired with loan management covering equipment loans, land financing, and operating lines of credit. Farmers and ranchers carry unique tax situations and capital needs that generic financial tools completely ignore, and this is the area where Moonance can create the most tangible value.

An insurance recommendation engine that matches a user's operation profile, location, and risk exposure to the right USDA RMA programs and private insurers. Right now users have to figure that out on their own. They shouldn't have to.

AI-driven recommendations for operational and financial decisions, combined with benchmarking against regional peers. The goal is to give every rancher access to the kind of data-backed guidance that large operations get from hired consultants, without the consultant.

Built With

• html
• javascript
• svelte
• typescript