Offline estimating for earthmoving jobs.
Truck loads, material and a rough price, worked out on site.

Built by DeSynkro with assistance from Opencode.

Made with ♥️ Thank you to everyone who was welcoming and kind.

Quote Assistant is a small offline tool for estimating earthmoving jobs. Enter the truck size, the areas being removed and any material being brought to site, and it works out truck loads and a rough price.

It runs fully offline in a browser, can be self-hosted on a local network with Docker, and is packaged for Linux, Windows and Android.

Why this exists

My father runs a small earthmoving and excavation business. I'm his apprentice and he's teaching me everything he knows. Dad is starting to feel his age, so I made him a little app to help with his quotes.

The goal was simple. While you're quoting a job and taking measurements for what needs to be removed or brought back to site, you can enter the details and measurements and the app calculates truck loads and a rough price based on your truck size.

At its heart, it's a preset calculator. You set up the size of your equipment and the measurements of what you need taken or brought and it calculates it for you. Simple as it gets.

Status

Quote Assistant is a personal project and still improving.

Requirements

• Browser: a modern browser. No installation or account is needed.
• Docker: Docker with the Compose plugin.
• Linux: the AppImage is self-contained and bundles the WebKitGTK and GTK libraries.
• Windows: Windows 10 or 11 with the WebView2 runtime, which is normally already installed.
• Android: Android 8 or later. The APK is installed manually.

Quick Start

Browser

Open app/index.html in your browser. The app works fully offline and stores data in the browser.

Docker Compose

Run these commands from the project root. Prefix them with sudo if your Docker setup requires it.

cp docker/.env.example docker/.env
# Set PUID and PGID in docker/.env to match id -u and id -g.
docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml up -d --build

Open http://<this-computer-ip>:8080 from another device on the same network.

The shared data lives in docker/data/. Stop the stack and copy that folder to back it up.

Linux AppImage

Download the latest .AppImage from Releases. Then make it executable and run it:

chmod +x Quote-Assistant-1.0.0.AppImage
./Quote-Assistant-1.0.0.AppImage

Windows portable .exe

Download the latest .exe from Releases and run it. No installer is needed.

The .exe is much smaller than the AppImage because it uses the WebView2 runtime already installed on Windows. The Linux AppImage has to include its own WebKitGTK and GTK libraries.

Android APK

Download the latest .apk from Releases, allow installation from your browser or file manager, and install it.

The current APK is about 463 MB because it is a universal debug build. It contains native libraries for four Android CPU architectures: x86_64, arm64-v8a, x86 and armeabi-v7a. Those four libraries make up around 455 MB of the download, and the debug build keeps its debug symbols. A release build for arm64-v8a only would be much smaller. The current APK is debug-signed and intended for sideloading and testing.

Screenshots

Features

• Truck setup: volume capacity, weight capacity, price per truck and optional fuel consumption.
• Truck presets: save, load and delete reusable truck configurations.
• Removals: rectangle, uneven ends, manual area and manual volume sections, with per-section swell.
• Materials in: multiple material entries by volume, weight or area × depth, with delivery pricing.
• Travel and fuel: round trips, calculated or manual trips, fuel consumption, diesel price or price per km.
• Quote readout: exact and rounded totals, GST options and a plain-language summary.
• Jobs: save, load, search, duplicate and delete jobs.
• Autosave and undo: draft restore, unsaved changes indicator and a 10 second undo window.
• Backups: export and import jobs and truck presets as JSON.
• Docker LAN sharing: shared jobs and truck presets for everyone on the local network.
• Preferences: dark, light and system themes, measurement decimals, reduced motion and autosave.
• Mobile: responsive layout with a sticky estimate bar.
• Private by default: no accounts, telemetry, analytics or cloud storage.

What data is stored

Where	What
Browser	Jobs, truck presets and preferences in local browser storage
Docker	Jobs and presets in docker/data/
Native apps	Planned: JSON files in the OS app data folder

No data is sent to an external service. Docker is intended for a trusted local network.

Tech Stack

Part	Technology
Frontend	Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Docker server	Node built-in modules, no npm
Docker orchestration	Docker Compose
Docker storage	JSON files in docker/data/
Native shell	Tauri 2 and Rust
Native storage	Pretty-printed JSON in the OS app data folder
Testing	node tests/run-tests.js and node --test tests/server.test.js

Troubleshooting

Port 8080 is in use

Change the host port in docker/docker-compose.yml or stop the other service using port 8080.

Docker cannot write to the data folder

Set PUID and PGID in docker/.env to match your user and group IDs:

id -u
id -g

Backups

Stop the Docker stack, copy docker/data/ somewhere safe, then start it again. The JSON files are the full shared job and preset data.

Development

The browser app has no build step. Open app/index.html directly.

Run the tests with:

node tests/run-tests.js
node --test tests/server.test.js

The browser test sandbox is available at tests/tests.html.

Building the Linux AppImage

The AppImage builder runs in Docker and does not install Rust, Tauri or WebKit development packages on your host.

cd build/appimage
sudo docker compose up --build

The finished AppImage is copied to dist/.

If your user ID is not 1000, copy .env.example to .env in build/appimage/ and set PUID and PGID to match id -u and id -g.

The builder image and Cargo caches stay in Docker storage and build/appimage/cache/. They can be removed safely.

The AppImage is much larger than the Windows .exe because it bundles WebKitGTK, GTK and the other Linux libraries needed to run independently of the host distribution. The Windows build uses the WebView2 runtime already provided by Windows.

Building the Windows portable exe

This uses an experimental Linux cross-build with cargo-xwin. The result should be tested on Windows.

cd build/exe
sudo docker compose up --build

The finished executable is copied to dist/Quote-Assistant.exe. It is portable and uses the Windows WebView2 runtime.

If the cross-build fails or the executable does not run correctly on Windows, a native Windows build remains the fallback.

Building the Android APK

The Android builder runs in Docker with the Android SDK, NDK, Java and Rust Android targets.

cd build/apk
sudo docker compose up --build

The finished APK is copied to dist/Quote-Assistant.apk. This is a debug-signed APK for sideloading and testing.

The first build downloads the Android SDK, NDK and Gradle dependencies, so it takes longer than later builds.

Support

If you find this useful, you can support me on Ko-fi. You can find more of my work at desynkro.com.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Credits

• Built by DeSynkro
• Assisted by Opencode
• Made for my dad's earthmoving business and shared for anyone who finds it useful
• Thank you to everyone who supported me, it means a lot 😄️