Recently I took on a web development project for a friend of a friend. Since my friend asked me as a favor, I agreed to help and started by building the static pages. The plan was to move everything into Laravel once the initial pages were approved.

The client turned out to be extremely picky. His change requests were tiny but constant. Every time I made an update, he asked for more adjustments. It became obvious that getting final approval would take weeks. I eventually walked away from the project without charging anything, even though I had already invested a lot of time and effort. That part was on me, because I never set boundaries or put anything in writing.

I want to avoid this situation in the future. What documents should I have in place, and at which stages should I provide them, so my time and work don’t go to waste?