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The Book A Sloth blog
Build logs, product thinking and engineering notes as we build a 0% commission booking platform — in the open.
Meet Bolt — instant answers, in the corner of every page
There is a new chat button on Book A Sloth. Behind it is Bolt: instant answers about booking, payments, plans, and hosting — any hour of the day.
The description box is where launches go to stall
The screen that stalls every new service isn't pricing or payments — it's the empty description box. Write with Bolt drafts the whole listing from your title. You edit, you nudge, you publish.
Nobody claps for the lock on the door
Every feature we shipped this month that you will never notice, never use, and would only hear about if it failed. Mandatory admin 2FA, automatic IP bans, and the unglamorous business of not being the story.
The arithmetic of commission
Commission feels free, because it never leaves your bank account — it just never arrives. Here is the same year, done twice, with a calculator instead of a feeling.
Get paid to refer, keep your clients in one place, and actual directions to the venue
Three things hosts kept quietly asking for: a referral programme that pays real cash, a client list that remembers your regulars, and a map link on offline bookings.
The double-entry ledger nobody asked for
We built a real double-entry accounting ledger into a booking app that, at the time, had barely any money flowing through it. It is the least fun thing we have built and the one I would defend hardest.
What happens to your Aadhaar after you upload it
We ask hosts for a PAN, an Aadhaar and a bank account before we will send them money. That is a lot to ask. Here is exactly where it goes, who can see it, and what we deliberately cannot do with it.
Two bookings, one slot, fifty people trying
The question was whether we needed Docker and Kubernetes to survive 10,000 people booking the same slot. The answer was no, and the reason why is the most useful thing we have learned about databases this year.
Explore knows what it’s doing now, and the app stopped feeling like a website
Explore used to rank services by roughly the order they were created. Now it ranks by a real quality score. Also: two people can no longer book the same slot.
How Explore Ranking Works on Book A Sloth: A Host’s Guide to Getting Found
Your spot on Explore is not random or pay-to-win. It is a quality score built from what you control. Here is what the algorithm measures, what moves it, and a 30-minute setup.
The day the site went white
Every route on bookasloth.com rendered a blank white page. No error. No red text in the console. Just white. Here is what broke, why it was invisible, and the one-line rule we now live by.
GST invoices, a verified badge for hosts, and Book A Sloth that fits in your pocket
Proper GST tax invoices for anyone claiming input credit, an end-to-end KYC flow so hosts can actually get verified, and a mobile experience rebuilt from the studs.
Where your money sits for seven days, and why
A guest pays you on Monday. The money is not withdrawable on Monday. Nobody enjoys this, including us, so here is the actual reason rather than a support macro about processing times.
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