Describe your business once. Run it everywhere.
A project starts with a rulebook: your tables, fields and calculations in one readable file. The database, API, admin app and docs are generated from it. We keep it online, and you can take all of it with you at any time.
Projects are free. No card needed.
Version the rules.
Not the “source code”.
A business rule, like how a late fee is charged, usually gets written down four times: in the database, in the code, in a spreadsheet and in the docs. Version control then tracks four piles of text, and when the rule changes someone has to find every copy. Sooner or later one is missed.
Here the rule is written once, and the rule is what gets the version. The code, the spreadsheet and the docs are rebuilt from it every time, so there is nothing else to keep in step.
Determined by priority: the monthly rent times the late fee percent if the days late is greater than the grace days; in all other cases, 0.IF(((D2 > F2)=TRUE), C2 * G2, 0)Move the grace-period slider and watch version one become version two.
A slider, a deliberate mistake typed straight into the rulebook, a fix made in Excel, and back to version one. Every copy follows along by itself. Watch on YouTube
The same card at its Enterprise level: a version named by a fingerprint of the rules, every fee with its derivation, the rule built four ways, and eight file formats in and out.
Move the grace-period slider. A rule's numbers are part of the rules, so version one becomes version two and every line is rebuilt.
Add a day to a lease. One fee is recomputed, but no rule changed, so the version does not change either.
Edit the rules in Excel or YAML and drop the file back. If the rules match, so does the version. Put everything back and it reads v1 again.
We turn what you already know into working software — at any scale.
Drop a rulebook, get a working repository back — that is the whole of it, and the film is fifteen minutes of it actually happening. Cost is decoupled from size by construction, not by discount.
The full walkthrough · Drop Your Rulebook Here · 15 min
The rulebook is the only thing anyone writes or edits. Change a rule, and the database, API, app, docs and tests all follow. They cannot drift, because they were never independently written in the first place.
A 500-table system and a 50-table one cost roughly the same to build. Generation is not billed by the hour against scope — it is closer to a print run than a construction project. This is the part a shop that hand-writes code cannot match.
A solo builder gets the identical core mechanism for $0, today. That is not a loss leader — it is the proof. You can watch the exact machine that builds an enterprise system build your own project first.
Start where you actually are.
Each page has its own short film.
Describe it in a sentence and get the rulebook for it: every table, field and rule, written down where you can read it.
Watch the film and read more →Most projectsOne process, and it lives in someone's head.The undocumented thing your team works around. Write it down once, get software that runs on it.
Watch the film and read more →For dev shopsI deliver software for other people.Describe your methodology once, and deliver against it, again and again.
Watch the film and read more →Ontology & auditEvery department means something different by the same word.Ontology, provenance and audit readiness — a system of record that survives the people who built it.
Watch the film and read more →Start anywhere. Arrive at the same project.
A new project starts with the same starter rulebook effortless -init writes. Bring your own rules in when you create it, or later. It is the same step either way.
A project with a core rulebook
Ready to edit, to add seeds and tools to, and to start. However it began.
Download your whole account as a spreadsheet.
Not just your rows: your entire model. Projects, rulebooks, seeds, the licenses you hold and the license models that compute your usage. We run our own business on a rulebook too, so this is the file we would want.
| A · License | B · Product | C · Level | D · Model | E · Used | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | L-0193 | From Airtable | Tracked | 5 imports per base every 30 days | 2 of 5 |
| 3 | L-0207 | rulebook-to-xlsx | Tracked | 100 runs per month | 7 of 100 |
| 4 | L-0211 | Shared hosting | Enforced | 1 live run per project | 1 of 1 |
Know exactly what happened, after the fact.
Each run carries one hash through every step, along with the hash of the rulebook version that governed it. Each actor, a person, a tool or an AI, reports what it did and adds its result to the chain.
Keep your tools. Change what they point at.
This is not a replacement for Cursor, or for the Airtable base your team actually runs on. It is the layer underneath both — the one that holds the rules, so nothing above it has to.
They are genuinely good at the screen — where things go, and how the thing feels to use. They are not where a business rule should live. Point one at a codebase and every rule becomes a line buried somewhere nobody can find later.
Point it at a rulebook-enforced database instead. It carries on doing the part it is good at, on a foundation where the rules are already enforced.
This is where most of these rules already live: spread across formulas, automations and views that one person understands and nobody ever wrote down. It worked right up until the day it became the system of record.
Airtable is a first-class input, not something to flee. Point us at the base and it comes back as a rulebook you can read — and that rulebook is what builds the real database, API and app.
Every one of those numbers is a range, and the width of the range is the amount of typing nobody can predict. That is not bad estimating. It is what happens when the rules get written four times over.
We write them once. That is the whole reason we can put a single number on a card instead of a range.
Technology is a setting, not a rewrite: the same rulebook compiles onto Postgres, MySQL, Airtable, Django and Entity Framework through seeds. Want the long version? How we compare lays it out row by row, including what we don't claim.
Or run it yourself.
Everything we build your project with is open source, and it is the same engine either way — three commands and you are running it. Commercial licenses are for companies running many projects at once, and for large organizations.
- 01Add Effortless to Claude Code
Two commands install the Effortless skills.
- 02Describe your app in one sentence
Claude writes the rules and builds a working app.
- 03Change a rule
Say it in plain language. The whole app follows.
Regulated gaming already runs on this.
A US state agency and a tribal gaming commission both run regulatory software built this way — the kind that gets audited. So does a live cattle auction platform, a car wash chain and a nursery group.
“EffortlessAPI upgraded our entire gaming device management system.”
“EffortlessAPI has made our entire regulatory gaming compliance operation more efficient, improving efficiency by over 250%.”
“No way we could have rebuilt CattleUSA without your expertise.”
Every project is free. Pro keeps yours awake.
Start free with no card. Upgrade inside when you want your projects to stay up for an hour instead of five minutes, and the rest of what Pro includes.
Want a hand getting there? Training, consulting and onsite work are on Professional services.
- Everything in Free
- Scales to zero after an idle hour instead of 5 minutes
- Unlimited tool runs
- Unlimited private rulebooks
- 3 hosted bases
- 5 seats