I'm building ShiftLog, a free shift and profit tracker for gig workers and drivers. One decision shaped the whole app: it works offline-first, with no account and no cloud.

Why? Gig workers lose signal all the time — in parking garages, on highways, in rural areas. And on a low-end phone with a small data plan, every megabyte matters. If tracking a shift needs the internet, it won't get tracked.

So ShiftLog stores everything on the device itself: shifts, income, expenses. Open the app, log the shift, done — signal or no signal. There is no sign-up screen standing between a driver and their own numbers, because there is no server holding them.

The trade-off is honest: there is no cross-device sync.…