Blog
Notes from the maintainer
Practical writing on winter service documentation, self-hosting, and the design decisions inside Wintertrace. No marketing posts. No algorithm-chasing. Things that someone running winter service might actually want to read.
- 9 min read
Release notes
Why the software stays small — and why its biggest module is a warehouse
The Warehouse module for Wintertrace has shipped: stock keeping for a winter service, inside the software that already documents the work. Also the reason the core stays deliberately small, and what 4.19 billion tokens went into.
- 12 min read
Industry
Getting paid to clear snow in Canada: what it actually takes
You have a truck, a full-time job, and a neighbour willing to pay you to clear their driveway. Here is what it takes to do winter service on the side legally in Canada — registration, tax, GST/HST, insurance and workers' comp, province by province.
- 13 min read
Industry
Winter service across Canada: one country, a dozen winters
What winter really looks like across Canada — from mild, rainy Vancouver to the Prairie deep-freeze and St. John's snow — and why the rules that govern snow clearing are municipal, not national.
- 4 min read
Release notes
Try Wintertrace live — in your own demo
You can now test Wintertrace the honest way: request a demo, confirm your email, and run your own real installation free for 48 hours. Here is how it works, and why I built it.
- 5 min read
Seasonal
Summer is the time to trial winter service software
Mid-July is the unglamorous but ideal moment to trial winter service software — time to test it live, train drivers, and decide calmly before the first snow falls.
- 9 min read
Industry
Winter-service software in Klingon
Wintertrace now has a Klingon language pack, alongside French and Czech. A look at why open source ships things no one would ever put up for sale.
- 10 min read
Release notes
How a documents module turned into building my own signing engine
The Documents module for Wintertrace has shipped — and getting online signing right meant building a separate signing engine, NoSign, from scratch. The story of how a simple module spiralled, and what an operator actually gets out of it.
- 8 min read
Release notes
Telegram notifications: the right message to the right person
A new Wintertrace module sends winter-service notifications over Telegram — to drivers, customers, and admins. Consent first, no instant send, and a building block other modules can use.
- 9 min read
Release notes
Bringing contracts into Wintertrace — a module in the works
A new Wintertrace module, currently in development: store and assign customer contracts, and have them signed online — with an audit record and a privacy design that deletes the document once everyone has signed.
- 8 min read
Compliance background
What an audit-trailed service proof actually contains
What goes into a Wintertrace service proof — and why an audit-trailed record of a winter operation is harder to dispute than a written log.
- 7 min read
Industry
How a favour for a colleague became Wintertrace
The story behind Wintertrace: a colleague asked for GPS-backed proof on his side job, and it grew into open-source winter service software built in the open.
11 posts, newest first. The register is also available as a feed.
Topic suggestions welcome
If there is a question you would want answered properly — about documentation, evidence quality, self-hosting, or anything adjacent — let us know. What gets written next follows the questions operators actually ask.