ScopeGuard

Inspiration As a software engineer, I learned a brutal statistic: 71% of freelancers experience unpaid work because of "quick favors" and scope creep. Freelancers hate awkward money conversations, so they often just do the extra work for free. I wanted to build an AI proxy that removes the human confrontation, politely sets boundaries, and automatically turns those extra requests into paid invoices.

What it does ScopeGuard is an AI-powered scope creep detector and automated billing agent. When a client sends a message asking for extra work, ScopeGuard ingests it via webhook, audits the request against the original signed contract using Google Gemini, and flags any out-of-scope work. It then drafts a polite explanation email and automatically generates a real change-order invoice using the PayPal Sandbox API.

How I built it Frontend: React (Vite), vanilla CSS, and HTML for a clean, dashboard-style UI.

Backend: Node.js and Express to handle API routing and webhooks.

AI Engine: Google Gemini AI handles the deterministic contract auditing and generates the polite client communication.

Billing Engine: PayPal Invoicing and Billing APIs generate the actual sandbox invoices with a 15-day due date.

Challenges I ran into My team had to step away for college practicals and exams, so I had to pivot and build this entire full-stack application as a solo developer within the hackathon time limit. Integrating the PayPal API with Gemini's audit output required strict safeguards so the AI didn't automatically bill clients without human oversight.

What I learned I deepened my understanding of the PayPal Sandbox API and learned how to force an LLM (Gemini) into a strict, deterministic flow where its output directly feeds into a billing engine.

What's next for ScopeGuard Integrating the Gmail API to pull client requests directly from a live inbox instead of relying on a webhook simulation.

Built with:node.js, express, react, vite, google-gemini, paypal-api, javascript, html, css

Try it out links:

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Chaitanya270608/Scope-Guard

YouTube Demo: https://youtu.be/7LGxAzkCpfM?si=U748KFNaOFHjbYJ7