5 Minutes Per Check. 3 Courts. 5 Days a Week. I Made It Disappear.

A pickleball coach was checking court availability by hand -- navigating clunky city portals, logging in, clicking through calendars. Five minutes per court, three courts a day, five days a week. That's over 60 hours a year on one task. Different courts in different cities? Start the whole process over on a different website. I had a proof of concept running the same afternoon.

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60+ hrs/yr

Saved from one automation

$1,500+/yr

In labor costs, on one task

$0/run

Zero cost per use, forever

The same task. Two very different experiences.

Before -- ~5 minutes per court, per check

1. Find the right city's recreation website

2. Navigate to court reservations (every city is different)

3. Log in or create an account

4. Find the right facility and court type

5. Click through the calendar date by date

6. Scan each time slot for availability

7. Write down the open times

8. Repeat for the next court -- or the next city's website

The math: 5 min/check × 3 courts × 5 days/week × 50 weeks = 62.5 hours/year. At $25/hr, that's $1,562/year on one task. Add more courts or cities and it multiplies fast.

After -- one click

Court availability tool showing open time slots for April 21

I had two options. I picked the free one.

The obvious approach was to use AI vision -- point a model at the city's website and have it read the screen. That works, but it costs about $0.50 every time someone checks. For a tool people use multiple times a week, that adds up fast.

Instead, I found the city's public booking widget URL and wrote a script that reads the data directly. Same result. Zero cost per use. The tool pays for itself on day one because there's nothing to pay.

I also made sure it was legal. The data is publicly accessible government facility information -- no login required, no terms of service violated, no credentials stored. I research this before I build, not after.

$0.50/run

AI vision approach. Works, but expensive at scale. Good for prototyping -- not for production.

$0/run ✓

Direct data approach. Same output, zero marginal cost. Runs forever without a bill.

Every business has tasks like this.

This specific tool checks court availability. But the pattern is universal. Someone in your business is doing something on a computer right now that could be done in one click -- or done automatically without anyone touching it at all.

Checking inventory across suppliers. Pulling reports from three different systems. Copying data from emails into a spreadsheet. Looking up pricing. Sending follow-ups. Whatever it is -- if a human is doing it manually on a screen, I can probably make it disappear.

And as this project shows, sometimes it only takes an afternoon.

It's live right now. Real data, real time.

This tool is pulling real availability data from Oakland's Bushrod Park courts right now. Pick a date and see what comes back.

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