The problem with tracking dev work
Your day rarely matches what the timer says:
- A 2-hour bug fix that turned into a 5-hour rabbit hole
- A "quick" code review that became a refactor discussion
- Three standups across two clients in the same morning
- A deploy that broke, rolled back, then took an hour to diagnose
- An AWS bill, a Vercel renewal, a Cursor subscription — all in different inboxes
Most timers were designed for clean blocks. Dev work is not clean blocks. It's interrupts, context switches, and "I forgot to start the timer again."
That's the gap Frency fills.
How Frency works for developers
You write a brain dump in plain English. Something like:
"Today: 2h bug fix for Acme ticket #234, 1h code review Studio Bianchi PR, 30min standup, deployed Acme v2.1, AWS invoice €87."
I read it and produce:
- Time entries with client, project, and duration
- An expense for AWS, attributed to the client if you say so
- Clients and projects auto-detected
- A report card showing exactly what I parsed
Real brain dump examples for developers
Brain dump 1 — A normal Wednesday
"9 standup Acme 20min, 9:30-12 feature work auth refactor Acme, lunch, 13:30 code review Studio Bianchi 1h, 14:30-17 bug fix Acme #234 + deploy, 17 GitHub Copilot renewal €10."
Frency understood:
- Acme: 20min standup + 2.5h auth refactor + 2.5h bug fix + deploy = 5h 20min
- Studio Bianchi: 1h code review
- Expense: €10 Copilot, monthly subscription
Brain dump 2 — Production fire
"Acme prod broke at 14:00. 3h debugging + fix + rollback + re-deploy. Bill as emergency rate."
Frency understood:
- Acme: 3h emergency work (flagged for emergency rate)
Brain dump 3 — End of sprint recap
"Sprint recap: Mon full day Acme feature, Tue 4h Acme + 3h Studio Bianchi maintenance, Wed standup-heavy day 2h actual work split, Thu code review + PR back-and-forth all day Studio Bianchi, Fri ship + retro 4h Acme. AWS €87, Vercel €20 both Acme infrastructure."
Frency understood:
- 5 days split per client per day
- Acme: ~18h
- Studio Bianchi: ~12h
- Expenses: €87 AWS + €20 Vercel, both Acme infrastructure
What you get with Frency
- Brain dump → time entries in seconds
- AI client and project detection — no setup first
- Expense capture in the same brain dump (AWS, Vercel, Copilot, domains)
- Credit-based wallet — €1 = 100 credits, pay only for what you use
- Free tier with about 10 brain dumps a month after signup
- Phone + desktop — log from CLI muscle memory or from the couch
- DP Hours timer included if you want classic timer mode for long focus blocks
How this compares to your current stack
Most freelance devs I talk to use one of these setups:
- Toggl + Linear/Jira — timer for tracking, ticket system for tasks
- Harvest + manual invoicing
- Time tracker in IDE plus a spreadsheet
- Nothing — invoice from git log and memory
Frency doesn't replace your ticket system. It replaces the "log what I did" step that you keep skipping. Brain dump in. Time entries out.
Try it without signing up
I built Frency so you can try it before committing anything. No signup. No credit card.
Three brain dumps free without signup. If you like it, create an account to keep going on the free tier.
Frency is built by DPLab, a software studio shipping solo with AI agents.