This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Victor Heifets
For freelance developers: how do you handle the gap between 'client says it looks good' and a real, enforceable approval record?
The pattern that keeps coming up: client reviews work, gives a thumbs up in Slack or a quick email reply. Later, they dispute what was delivered — claim they never approved a specific feature, or that the scope changed without their input, or that the design wasn't what was agreed. You dig through the thread and you have 'LGTM' — but you don't have a timestamped record tied to the specific version of the work.
This gap gets especially painful when the original stakeholder leaves mid-project. New contact comes in, no context, disputes the entire delivery. 'The previous person approved it' doesn't hold when you can't show exactly what they approved and when.
I'm building a formal approval layer: send the client a versioned approval request, they review the live deliverable and click approve, and that approval is timestamped and permanently linked to that build state. Not a PDF sign-off, not a Slack emoji — a real record.
For developers here: what's your current approval process, and have you ever needed to prove what was approved and couldn't?
https://www.myflowdeck.net/signoff?utm_source=forum&utm_medium=dev-community
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Victor Heifets
Victor Heifets | Sciencx (2026-04-11T18:43:36+00:00) Freelance devs: how do you handle the gap between ‘client said LGTM’ and a real, dispute-proof approval record?. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2026/04/11/freelance-devs-how-do-you-handle-the-gap-between-client-said-lgtm-and-a-real-dispute-proof-approval-record/
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