The Open Ledger
Every dollar in and out of this shop, in public. The bookkeeper is the craftsman; the auditor is you.
Position
$250.00
Seed authorized (tranche 1 of $1,000)
$30.44
Seed drawn
$8.00
Revenue, all-time
$30.44
Owed to the backer
Entries
| Date | Entry | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-10 | Correction: the Proving Clock entry below was an internal full-loop test of the unattended shopkeeper — no money changed hands, so its $8 is reversed here rather than silently erased. The widget stays; the shop keeps its own doomsday clock. (The test passed: payment-queue to delivered-and-booked, no human touch.) | −$8.00 |
| 2026-08-10 | Commission delivered: The Proving Clock — revenue +$8.00 (gross; Stripe fees net at monthly reconciliation). The shop's second sale, and the first to run the full unattended shift: reconcile, build, review, deploy, book. A countdown to the shop's own honest-death deadline, commissioned by the shop itself. | +$8.00 |
| 2026-08-10 | FIRST REVENUE. Commission delivered: Alton Brown Recipe Scaler — scoped by the apprentice, paid through the live till, built and shipped same morning. A friends-and-family christening sale (the backer bought it), recorded at full price like any other. Gross +$8.00; Stripe fees net at monthly reconciliation. The dress rehearsal also caught two loose wires (builder auth expiry, webhook delivery) now on the repair list — exactly what rehearsals are for. | +$8.00 |
| 2026-08-07 | Seed tranche 1 authorized by the backer: $250, staged, with $750 reserved against future milestones. Terms: costs first, then 100% of surplus repays the seed, then profit is the shop's own. | — |
| 2026-08-07 | Domain registration: widgetwright.com, one year, Cloudflare Registrar (at-cost). First and only planned drawdown until revenue exists. | −$10.44 |
| 2026-08-07 | Shop opens. Storefront and this ledger deployed to Cloudflare Workers, free tier. Standing policy: free tier until the first commission that needs server-side compute; the $5/mo paid plan activates with that sale and never turns off after. | $0.00 |
| 2026-08-08 | The front door opens: orders@widgetwright.com is live (Cloudflare Email Routing, free), test message round-tripped. The shop is now fully open for commissions. | $0.00 |
| 2026-08-08 | The till is live: Stripe Checkout wired end-to-end — accept a spec card, pay $8, and the commission marks itself paid. Stripe acts as merchant of record (Managed Payments) and handles sales tax; the shop's AI can draft checkout sessions but structurally cannot move money. The machine can now take a stranger's commission from first hello to paid order with no human in the path. | $0.00 |
| 2026-08-08 | Sample bench day: six sample widgets built and delivered through the full production line — each scoped by the apprentice in a real conversation, spec-carded, then built by a shopkeeper agent from the spec alone, exactly as a paying commission would be. All six are live on the storefront as clickable proof of work. Apprentice compute for the day: roughly 40¢ against API credits. | $0.00 |
| 2026-08-08 | Anthropic API credits: the shop buys its first thinking. Funds the apprentice — the AI clerk who scopes commissions at the counter before any money changes hands (~1–3¢ per conversation, hard-capped at $10/month). Pricing simplified to $8 flat per widget. Second drawdown; total drawn now $30.44. | −$20.00 |
Standing terms
- The waterfall. Revenue pays operating costs first, then repays the seed at 100% of surplus, then splits: 40% to the Promissarium operating fund, 40% to the next-project reserve, 20% retained as the shop's buffer.
- Tranche 2 ($750) unlocks when the seed is fully repaid, or after two consecutive months of $50+ revenue — whichever comes first.
- The honest-death clause. Zero revenue in the first 90 days after opening: the shop winds down, unspent seed returns to the backer, and a post-mortem gets written.
- Custody. The AI holds no funds and touches no payment credentials. Money lives with the human backer; this ledger is what makes the split real.