Work / A side quest · a non-serious case study
Who cleaned
my plot?
How I joined my layout's committee, talked to 100 neighbours, built a tiny app with Claude, and cleared ₹3.5 lakh in arrears in three days.
- Managing committee member
- Built with Claude
- 406 plots
- One shared login
Scroll, it's a short story ↓
Chapter 1
I moved in.
Anugraha Evergreen is a layout of plots. Some owners have built homes and live here. Many are investors who bought a plot and visit once in a while, if at all.
Somewhere between unpacking and meeting the dogs next door, I joined the managing committee.
Chapter 2
Then I made the mistake of opening the books.
Only 1 in 5 owners paid maintenance regularly. Which is a polite way of saying the other four didn't.
uh oh.
Chapter 3
So I did the designer thing.
I asked. About 100 times.
A spreadsheet tells you who isn't paying. It never tells you why. So I called, messaged and stopped people at the gate.
Why should I pay? I don't even live there.
I paid last year. Nothing changed.
Who decides where the money goes?
My plot looks like a jungle.
I'll pay when I start building.
Is anyone even cleaning plots?
The pattern
Most people who didn't pay were plot owners who don't live here. And for them, maintenance had exactly one benefit they could see.
Chapter 4
The problem wasn't money. It was visibility.
Maintenance paid for a lot, but none of it shows up if you live in another city. Investors could only see whether their plot was clean.
And our gardeners were busy with drains, trees and common areas. Plot cleaning happened whenever it happened.
- What maintenance pays forCan an owner see it?
- Street lightsNope
- Common area cleaningNope
- DrainsNope
- Tree cuttingNope
- Two gardeners and a supervisorNope
- My plot, cleanedYes!
Chapter 5
Two tiny fixes. No 40-page proposal.
Give the gardeners' week a rhythm
Set days for plot cleaning, Fridays for common areas, and one day a month for tree cutting.
Make it visible
A tiny app where anyone can type a plot number and see when it was last cleaned, and when it's next.
That's it. That's the app.
Chapter 6
The simplest app I've ever designed.
The whole point was trust, so it had to be impossible to get wrong.
- One shared login for every owner and resident. No sign-ups, no forgotten passwords.
- Two buttons for the supervisor: cleaned, or not today.
- Pay, then get cleaned. Each payment puts a plot in the rotation for six months.
- Dates that move, show it. Rain happens. Owners see the old date and the new one.
- Nothing personal. No names, no numbers, no amounts.
Plot status
Today · 3 plots
Owner view · Supervisor view
Chapter 7
Built with Claude, mostly on weekends.
I'm a designer, not an engineer. But I can break a problem down, describe the rules and test with real people. With Claude, that was enough.
- Listen~100 owners
- Spot itthe one thing they value
- Simplifytwo fixes, not ten
- Builddescribe the rules to Claude
- Shipone link, one login
Chapter 8
Three days later…
₹3,50,000
in arrears, cleared in 3 days.
turns out people pay when they can see what they're paying for.
Epilogue
Not solved. But a start.
Not everyone pays yet, and a schedule doesn't fix everything. But we went from "where does our money go?" to "my plot was cleaned on Tuesday". That's the start of trust.