Plock

Humans have always been preoccupied with time. We measure it, chase it, lose it, optimize it. It shapes our ambitions and our anxieties. In work, it becomes something even more concrete: hours, deadlines, deliverables.

In a software studio, time quickly turns operational. It defines scope, pricing, sustainability. It determines how projects move and how a company grows. Yet for years, we relied on external tools to measure the very work we build for others.

As the team grew, so did the subscription costs. The tools worked—many of them are solid products—but every month we were paying to track something we knew how to build ourselves. At some point, the question stopped being “should we?” and became “why aren’t we?”

We treated the initial development of Plock as a formal product cycle. Our engineering team laid down a structured architecture and a scalable codebase, ensuring that from the very first commit, we were building a high-standard tool that could grow alongside the studio.

As this foundation stabilized, more team members contributed. Plock moved from a strategic experiment to our daily driver. We began using it internally to log hours, organize projects, and support invoicing.

Over time, the scope expanded naturally. What started as time tracking evolved into reporting and aggregated visibility. Leadership gained access to structured data about workload distribution, project allocation, and billing flow. The product matured as we used it.

The interface is intentionally simple: log the task, select the project, assign the time. Review entries weekly. Keep the data clean. Building on this clarity, Plock's next iterations continue to broaden its ecosystem through seamless integrations and deeper connectivity with our existing workflow.

Plock reflects a broader habit inside Plum. When something becomes central to how we operate, we’re inclined to build it ourselves. It keeps costs under control, but more importantly, it keeps ownership close.

Have you ever seen a cat suddenly sprint from one side of a room to the other, as fast as it possibly can, for no apparent reason? There’s a biological explanation for it. They run like that because they simply can. Because their bodies are capable of it. Because they want to feel that capacity in motion.

Plock carries a bit of that same instinct. We knew how to build it. So we did.

The long-term intention is to open Plock beyond Plum, potentially as an open-source project. The foundation is there. Whether it evolves outward or continues as internal infrastructure, it stands as proof that we are comfortable building the systems we depend on and turning internal needs into real products.