Client work, kept inside the scope you agreed: why I built Creepless

A solo build, 15 days, one narrow problem: agencies doing free work because saying "that costs extra" feels awkward.

A client has been with your agency for two years. You agreed on four landing page updates and two revision rounds a month. Then a message lands: "Can you just add a pricing page? It should only take a minute."

You say yes, because the relationship matters more than a few hours. Next month it happens again. Nobody tracks it, nobody bills it, and by the end of the year it's a meaningful chunk of revenue that never showed up on an invoice.

This is scope creep, and most agency owners know it's happening. What they lack is a clean way to catch it at the moment the client asks, before the "yes" is already out of their mouth. That's what I built Creepless to do.

What Creepless is

Creepless is a scope referee for agencies and freelancers. You define what each client's plan includes. Every request that comes in is checked against that plan and marked included, extra, or needs review. Extra work turns into a quote the client approves before you start.

It is not a project management tool and not a full client portal. It sits in front of the tools you already use and answers one question fast: is this covered, or is this billable?

How it works, step by step

1. Set the scope once per client. You list what's included, what's excluded, how many revision rounds they get, how many hours per month, and your rate for extras (or a fixed price menu like "new page: $180").

2. Share one private link. Each client gets a request link. They don't create an account or log in. They open it, see what their plan includes and how much they've used, and send requests from there.

3. The client sends a request. A guided form collects the type of work, details, a checklist, reference links, a deadline, and files (images, PDFs, Word docs), so you stop getting vague one-liners over chat.

4. The referee makes the call. Each request is checked against the client's scope, revision count, and hour cap. You get a verdict, the rule behind it, and a ready-to-send reply. If a client says "another round on the homepage" and their two revisions are used up, it's flagged extra, with the reason.

5. You decide with one click. Approve it as free, send a quote, decline, or ask the client a question. The referee suggests, but the decision is always yours.

6. The client approves the quote. They see the price on their link and approve or decline before work begins, so the price is agreed in writing instead of argued about afterwards.

How the referee decides

The checking runs on an AI model, with a plain rules engine behind it as a fallback. If the AI is unavailable or a plan's monthly AI checks run out, requests still get a verdict from the rules engine, so nothing stalls.

Every verdict shows the rule it used ("covered by 4 landing page updates", "new page builds are excluded"). That matters more than it sounds. When you tell a client something is extra, you can point to the exact line they agreed to, which takes most of the awkwardness out of the conversation.

There's also an Ask the referee box: paste any client message from WhatsApp or email and get the call plus a suggested reply.

Getting paid

Once a client approves a quote, you can collect payment in two ways:

• Card payment via Stripe. Connect your own Stripe account in Settings and your client can pay by card from the quote page, with the money going to your account.
• Offline. Mark it as paid yourself when an invoice or bank transfer comes through.

Quotes, approvals, client messages, file uploads, and revenue reports all live in one dashboard, so you can see what you quoted, what was approved, and what you've collected.

What you see after a few weeks

• Extra work recovered: the dollar value of requests that would have been free.
• Per-client breakdown: which clients ask for the most extras (usually a surprise).
• Client value report as a PDF, which makes pricing conversations at renewal time a lot easier.

Who it's for

Web and design agencies, marketing agencies, dev studios, and freelancers with recurring or retainer clients. Anywhere a client can say "just one more thing" on a Tuesday afternoon.

Pricing

Plan	Price	Clients	AI checks / mo
Free	$0	2	20
Solo	$15/mo	10	250
Studio	$39/mo	40	1,000
Agency	$79/mo	150	4,000

Yearly billing saves up to 26%. Studio and Agency add your own logo and brand colour, custom domains for the client portal, and removal of the "Powered by Creepless" badge. No contracts, no card needed to start.

Try it without signing up

• The live demo lets you run sample client requests through the referee.
• The scope creep calculator estimates what free work might be costing you.

Where it is, and what I need from you

Creepless is new. I built the first version in 15 days, and I want it shaped by people who actually deal with this problem. If you run an agency or freelance, please try it and tell me:

• Is scope creep a real problem for you, or one I'm overweighting?
• What was confusing in the first five minutes?
• What would stop you from sending a client link to a real client?

Blunt feedback is more useful to me right now than "looks cool." You can reply here, or find me on X or LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading.