{"slug": "shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop", "title": "Shoebox: A Receipt Sorter That Runs an Open-Weight AI on Your Own Laptop", "summary": "A developer built Shoebox, an open-source receipt and invoice sorter that runs an open-weight AI model locally on the user's own laptop, extracting vendor, date, total, currency and a suggested tax category without uploading anything to a third-party service. The app is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no backend or build step, and offers three selectable engines: Ollama, in-browser WebLLM, and a rules-only mode for instant demos. The developer notes the trade-off that 1.5B to 3B models misread messy receipts more often than large hosted models, so Shoebox flags low-confidence rows and leaves final categorization to the user.", "body_md": "*This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week2-2026-10-12)*\n\n**Shoebox** is a private receipt and invoice sorter for freelancers. You paste the text of your receipts, and an open-weight AI model running on your own laptop pulls out the vendor, date, total and currency, then suggests a tax category. Everything is totalled by category, with a \"likely deductible\" figure, and you can export it all as a CSV for your accountant.\n\nIt also has a 3D view: each receipt flies out of a shoebox and lands on a tower for its category, and the towers grow with your spending.\n\n**Who would pay for it:** freelancers, consultants and small-business owners who dread the end-of-month receipt pile and don't want client invoices uploaded to a third-party service. A simple pricing idea is a one-time license for the local app, or a small yearly fee for updates and category packs tuned for specific professions.\n\n**The problem it solves:** sorting receipts by hand is slow, and cloud tools mean sending client names and amounts to someone else's server. Shoebox does the sorting where the files already live.\n\nTo try it in 30 seconds with no setup: open the 3D app, click **Load samples**, choose **Quick rules only**, and press **Sort receipts**. For real AI parsing, use the Ollama or in-browser model engine (see below).\n\nPrivate receipt and invoice sorter for freelancers, with an interactive 3D view. It runs an open-weight AI model on your own laptop, so your receipts never leave your computer. No upload, no account, no per-receipt fee.\n\n**Live demo:** [https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/shoebox-local-receipts/shoebox3d.html](https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/shoebox-local-receipts/shoebox3d.html)\n\n`---`.\nShoebox is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript in single files, with no backend and no build step.\n\n**Open-source AI pieces:**\n\n`localhost:11434` and asks for strict JSON back (vendor, date, total, currency, category, deductible).\n**How it fits together:**\n\nThree engines are selectable in the app: Ollama, in-browser WebLLM, and a rules-only mode with no AI for instant demos.\n\nFor this particular product, open weights are what make it work as a business:\n\nThe honest trade-off: a 1.5B to 3B model misreads messy receipts more often than a large hosted model. That is why Shoebox flags low-confidence rows and keeps the person in charge of the final categories.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/anshika_trivedi_b605a51ac/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop-45ac", "published_at": "2026-10-15 10:05:50+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-15 10:19:44.317020+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "large-language-models", "ai-products", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Shoebox", "Ollama", "WebLLM", "Hacktoberfest"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/shoebox-a-receipt-sorter-that-runs-an-open-weight-ai-on-your-own-laptop.jsonld"}}