Opportunities › Knowledge capture for legacy mainframe modernization › Proposed app
Tallyman Notes
Capture why your mainframe works, from the experts who know, before they retire
- Score
- 36
- confidence 50
- Evidence
- 6
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 1
- named in sources
- First version
- 60 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop app
- PWA: runs in the browser, installs on Mac and Windows
- Market since
- no product yet
- New market · AI estimate
ScreensConcept
Desktop app: Engineers and modernization teams conduct guided interviews, review code-linked knowledge, and export documentation for analysis projects. Sample screens on a computer, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
Capture priorities
Sorted by loss risk14 modules
About this appAI proposal
Tallyman Notes records the reasoning behind legacy COBOL systems while the people who built them are still around. Short AI-led interview sessions walk a senior engineer through a program, a batch job or a business rule, and ask the follow-up questions a new colleague would ask.
Each answer is pinned to the code it explains. Programs, copybooks, jobs and people become one searchable map, so a modernization team can see not only what a routine does but why it was written that way and who said so.
It is built for modernization leaders and technical teams in banks, insurers, airlines and government. Unlike tools that read only repositories, it treats the expert's memory as a first-class source and shows which parts of the system have no recorded reasoning yet.
- Tagline
- Keep the reasoning, not just the code.
- Voice
- CalmPreciseRespectful
- Why this name
- A tallyman kept the count so nothing was forgotten. The name suggests careful record-keeping of what people know.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
Guided expert interviews
AI prepares questions from a chosen program, asks follow-ups, and lets the expert answer by voice or text in 20-minute sessions.
No member yet
Answers pinned to code
Every captured explanation links to the exact programs, copybooks, jobs and data sets it concerns.
No member yet
Knowledge map
Browse code, systems and human reasoning as one graph. Ask a question and see the source behind each answer.
No member yet
Undocumented-risk view
See which modules have no recorded reasoning and rely on one person, so interviews go where loss would hurt most.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#1F4D43Ledger Green · primary#F6F2E8Paper · surface#1B1F1EInk · text#C48A2CBrass · accent#4A6A86Slate Blue · data
Typography
Aa
Tallyman Notes
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
Keep the reasoning, not just the code.
PricingAI proposal
The material gives no competitor prices. Tiers follow its inference that pricing tracks codebase size and expert count; both are contact-us starting points to test with pilots.
Pilot
Contact us
- One system or codebase slice
- Up to 5 experts interviewed
- Knowledge map and export
- Guided onboarding
Program
Contact us
- Priced by codebase size and expert count
- Unlimited interviews and reviews
- Risk view and rules log
- SSO and audit trail
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$194,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- No loop in the product. Used inside a closed enterprise program. Exports go to modernization contractors and internal teams, but these are not open sharing links, so use does not spread by itself.
- Do they become customers?
- Reached through direct sales and content. Contractors who receive exports could become partners or buyers; this would have to be tested.
- First customers
- Modernization program leads at mid-sized US regional banks or insurers with an active mainframe rewrite and several experts within five years of retirement.
- Where to reach them
- Hacker News and engineering forums: Share write-ups on capturing unwritten rules and invite practitioners to a pilot.
- Mainframe community groups: Reach COBOL user groups and meetups where retiring experts and team leads gather.
- Direct outreach on LinkedIn: Message modernization leads and offer a free single-module interview pilot.
- First milestone
- Three paid pilots at institutions in one sector, each capturing at least five expert sessions on real modules.
Why people already pay for this
- VerifiedHacker News post received 91 points and 58 comments
- Public claim70% of Fortune 500 companies still run critical systems on mainframes.
- Public claimThe average age of COBOL/mainframe engineers is about 55 and rapidly increasing.
- AI inferenceModernization projects currently fail because institutional knowledge about why systems work as they do has not been captured in documentation or code.
- Public claim
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · AI modelsHosted LLM with no-training data termsInterview question generation, summaries and cited answers over code and notes.
- This app · Code parsingCOBOL and JCL parserLinks notes to COBOL programs, copybooks and JCL by structure rather than text search.
RisksAI inference
- DataBanks, insurers and agencies may refuse to upload source code to a cloud service. A self-hosted or code-free mode may be needed, which adds cost and delays.
- AIAI interviews may miss subtle points or invent plausible reasons. Expert sign-off and citations help, but trust must be earned in testing.
- CommercialEnterprise buying cycles are long, and the material gives no prices. Budget may sit with the contractors now doing this work, who may resist.
- TechnicalMainframe code varies widely in dialect and tooling, so linking notes to code could take much more work than a first version allows.
- CommercialSenior experts near retirement may be unwilling or too busy to give sessions. Adoption depends on management making time for them.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.