# Build brief — a focused alternative to MaintenEase

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 45/100 · **Category:** Tasks
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/maintenease
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from MaintenEase. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**MaintenEase** — CMMS for work orders, assets, preventive maintenance, and inspections. It currently costs $49/mo.

A focused work-order and preventive-maintenance tracker is a contained build, but dependable field use, notifications, permissions, backups, and long-lived asset history require ongoing operations.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of MaintenEase that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Register assets, assign work orders, schedule recurring preventive tasks, complete work from a mobile-friendly queue, and retain each asset's service history.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Hosted or local database.
- Scheduled background jobs.
- Notification channel.
- File storage.
- Mobile-friendly web UI.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a self-hosted maintenance work-order app for one facility.

- Use Node 22, Express, EJS, and better-sqlite3 with vanilla CSS and JS;
  server-render the pages and avoid a frontend build step.
- Model locations, assets, technicians, work orders, preventive-maintenance
  plans, and timestamped work logs.
- Give each asset a unique code, location, status, notes, and complete service
  history; add a printable QR code that opens its detail page.
- Work orders need priority, assignee, due date, status, checklist, labor notes,
  parts used, and photo attachments stored on disk.
- Provide a mobile-friendly technician queue with My Work, Due Today, Overdue,
  and Completed views plus large tap targets for status changes.
- Let an admin create recurring plans with daily, weekly, monthly, or meter-based
  intervals; a background job creates the next work order without duplicates.
- Send assignment and overdue alerts through ntfy, with its URL and topic in
  .env; show delivery failures in an admin log.
- Add dashboards for open work by priority, overdue work, completion time, and
  preventive-maintenance compliance.
- Support CSV import and export for assets and work orders, plus a documented
  command that backs up the SQLite database and attachment directory.
- Use session authentication with admin and technician roles, bcrypt password
  hashes, CSRF protection, upload limits, and an audit log.
- Include seed data, focused tests for recurrence and permissions, an .env.example,
  and a README with setup, backup, restore, and upgrade steps.
- Out of scope: native apps, predictive maintenance, accounting integrations,
  SSO, and multi-tenant billing.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Managed backups and hosted reliability.
- Polished mobile field workflows.
- Advanced analytics and predictive features.
- Integrations, API, and SSO.
- Years of history, configuration, and habits make migration costly.
- Permissions, presence, and shared workflows are difficult to simplify.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Atlas CMMS](https://github.com/Grashjs/cmms) — Open-source, self-hosted CMMS with web and mobile applications for work orders, assets, and preventive maintenance

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Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/maintenease