PayPilot

• 

  project

Inspiration

Freelancers and small shop owners lose hours every week on billing: writing invoices, sending reminders, and checking who has actually paid. Most of them aren't accountants, and chasing money feels awkward. We wanted billing to feel as easy as sending a text message, so we built PayPilot, an AI agent that handles invoicing end to end using PayPal.

What it does

PayPilot is a chat-first billing assistant:

-Create invoices in plain language. Type "Invoice Ravi ₹12,000 for the logo design, due Friday" and PayPilot creates and sends a PayPal invoice.

• Track payments in real time. PayPal webhooks update each invoice's status as soon as it's paid.
• Chase late payers politely. The agent drafts reminders in a friendly, firm, or final tone, and you approve before anything is sent.
• Answer questions about your money. Ask "Who still owes me this month?" and get an answer from live PayPal data.
• Show everything at a glance. A clean dashboard groups invoices into paid, pending, and overdue.

How we built it

• Front end: [React + Vite], with a chat-first interface designed in Figma.
• AI: The Claude API turns plain-language requests into structured actions (create invoice, send reminder, query status) that the backend validates.
• PayPal: [Invoicing API, Orders API, and Webhooks] in the PayPal sandbox.
• Backend: [Node.js + Express], hosted on [Render].
• Safety by design: The agent can only call a whitelist of PayPal actions, and a human confirmation step is required before any invoice or reminder goes out.

Challenges we ran into

• Getting the AI to return reliable, structured output instead of free text, so a vague message never creates a wrong invoice.
• Keeping invoice status in sync by handling PayPal sandbox webhooks correctly.
• Designing confirmation flows so an AI agent never sends money requests without the user's approval.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• A working end-to-end flow: chat message → real sandbox invoice → payment → live dashboard update.
• A UI simple enough that a non-technical shop owner can use it in under a minute.

What we learned

• How to design safe agentic commerce flows where AI acts but humans stay in control.
• How PayPal's invoicing APIs and webhooks work together.
• That good design matters as much as good code when the product is about trust and money. ## What's next for PayPilot
• Recurring invoices and payment plans
• WhatsApp and email reminders
• Multi-currency support (INR, USD) and GST-ready exports for Indian freelancers
• A plugin so other AI agents can use PayPilot to bill on a user's behalf

Built With

• anthropic
• claude
• express.js
• figma
• github
• javascript
• node.js
• paypal
• paypal-invoicing-api
• paypal-orders-api
• paypal-webhooks
• react
• render
• vite