unparty.app
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what is the work worth?

Every build costs hours before it costs anything else. Your copy prices those hours with a baseline: what an hour of the work is worth, what an hour costs in an LLM, and real projects with the hours they took. Goal Budget uses it to say what a build is worth, and Expensd uses it to price the time you track. It ships with mine, measured from my own repos. This step makes it yours.

Loading GoalBudget...

Open LIKE. and pick a project, or count your own hours. Everything it shows comes from the baseline you set here.

this is a work in progress

  1. Keep mine.

    Start priced against real, measured work.

  • Success.every build has a price you can stand behind.

1️⃣ Keep Mine While You Start

The baseline your copy ships with is real: 44 of my projects, their hours measured from git (commits close together count as one work session), priced at the median of two market salaries over a full-time year, plus the LLM cost I measured across my own sessions. It is a fair place to start. npm run check:identity will remind you it is still mine until you change it.

2️⃣ Set What an Hour Is Worth

Open src/data/FoundersConfig.json, the file from Make it yours. Near the bottom is baseline. The hourly rate is the middle of the pay you list, divided by hoursPerYear:

json
  "baseline": {
    "source": "my own projects, hours from my time tracking",
    "measured": "2026-10-17",
    "pay": [
      { "label": "freelance web designer", "yearly": 85000 },
      { "label": "small agency developer", "yearly": 95000 }
    ],
    "hoursPerYear": 2080,
    "llmPerHour": 0.92,
    "projects": [
      { "id": "soap-shop", "hours": 40 }
    ]
  }
  • pay — one or more yearly salaries for work like yours, each with a label saying whose it is. Numbers only: no $ sign, commas or quotes
  • hoursPerYear — 2080 is 52 weeks of 40 hours. Use fewer if you build part time
  • llmPerHour — what an hour of building costs you in an LLM. Your Claude usage page divided by the hours you worked that month is a good first number
  • source and measured — a line on where the numbers come from, and the day you measured them

3️⃣ Add Your Own Projects

The projects list is what Goal Budget offers under LIKE.: things you have built, with the hours they really took. Use your project ids from projects when you have them, so their covers show. Three good ways to get the hours:

  1. Track them — Expensd on the runway page keeps time as you work, and Goal Budget can follow it live
  2. Count them — your calendar, invoices, or a rough honest guess. A guess you can defend beats a number you can not
  3. Measure them — if your projects live on GitHub, your LLM can count work sessions from your commit history (prompt below)
bash
# Check the file, then look at Goal Budget
npm run check:identity
npm run dev
# open localhost:3000/goal-budget

🤖 Ask Your LLM

If you do not know what work like yours pays, or how long your projects took, your LLM can draft a baseline for your market. Check its numbers against a source you trust before you keep them:

prompt
I build [what you build] for [who you build for] in [your city or
country]. Give me two yearly salaries for work like mine, each with a
label and where the number comes from, and how many hours a year I
should count if I build [full time / about N hours a week].

Write them as this JSON, numbers without $ signs or commas:
{ "pay": [{ "label": "...", "yearly": 0 }], "hoursPerYear": 0 }

Here is my git log (git log --format="%an %ad" --date=iso). Group
commits less than 2 hours apart into work sessions, count 15 minutes
for a session with one commit, and tell me the total hours.
  • An LLM's salary is an estimate. Ask where it comes from, and prefer a number you can look up
  • Price your hours honestly, not hopefully: the baseline is what the work is worth, not what you wish it were
  • Your baseline is public on your site through Goal Budget. Leave out anything you would not show a customer

✅ You Are Done When

  • npm run check:identity passes, and no longer says the baseline is still mine (or you chose to keep it)
  • Goal Budget's BUILD. shows your hourly rate under the price
  • LIKE. lists your projects, with the hours they took
  • Expensd starts at your rate, and says it is from your baseline

Next, if you want to sell what you build, connect Polar. Your baseline is a good place to start a price from.

“Know what the work is worth before anyone tells you.”

— unparty-app