What shipped
Porch Light is a Halloween candy planner you can watch. Enter a guess at how many trick-or-treaters come down your street all night (last year's count is the best guess), the weather, and your porch-light hours. The tool spreads the crowd over the evening as a bell-curve rush around your peak time, in 5-minute steps from 4:30 to 10:00 PM. Kids who come by while your light is off don't count. Each kid takes your pieces-per-kid, or about 2.5× that from an unattended honor bowl. The bowl drains bin by bin, and the chart shows kids served in orange, kids who arrive after the bowl is empty in red, kids who pass while the light is off in gray, and a purple candy-left line, with sunset, peak, and a run-out marker. Tap, drag, or use the arrow keys to pick any 5 minutes, or press Play evening. A small porch scene shows the light glowing, the bowl level, and kids at the door. Stats cover kids while lit, doorbells, candy needed, candy on hand, run-out time, leftovers, and cost per kid. A shopping list says how many bags to add (or skip) to hit your safety buffer, or what ration would last until lights-off. Verdict chips: JUST RIGHT, TIGHT, LEFTOVERS, RUN OUT, LIGHTS OUT, and EMPTY. You can copy a markdown candy plan with a half-hour timeline, stamped in America/Chicago time, and state saves under porch-light-v1.
How to try
- The demo opens on Our cul-de-sac: 120 kids expected, light on 5:30–8:30 PM, 2 pieces each, and 3 bags of 100. About 107 kids come while the light is on, they take about 214 pieces, and 86 are left at lights-off (29%), so the verdict is JUST RIGHT.
- Load Candy Lane, a destination block with 480 kids. Four bags run dry at about 7:47 PM with roughly 50 kids still coming: RUN OUT. The shopping list says buy 2 more bags.
- Honor bowl leaves a single bag out while you're at a party. With honor-bowl raiding it's empty by about 6:41 PM, before most kids arrive: LIGHTS OUT. Full-size bar house just squeaks by with about 7 bars left (TIGHT). Rainy Saturday cuts the crowd to 0.55× and leaves over half the candy (LEFTOVERS).
- Change the light-off time, peak time, or pieces per kid and watch the run-out marker move. Then hit Copy plan to paste the shopping list into the family chat.
Why this (vs neighbors)
Halloween falls on Saturday, Oct 31 this year, 11 days out, and "how much candy do we buy?" is a real question with a fun answer. Walk-in Wait Board handles a business queue and Plate Cost prices restaurant food. Bus Bunch showed that arrivals over time are a good visual. Nothing in the catalog covers seasonal household planning, and this one is quick and playful: a big chart, a bowl, and a verdict.
Scope trim
No sunset calculation (type it in, or use Daylight Ribbon), no candy database or live prices, no allergy or teal-pumpkin tracking, no neighborhood multi-house simulation, and no share URL. One porch, one night, one bowl.
Limitations
- The rush is a single bell curve (σ = 55 minutes) scaled to your estimate. Real nights are lumpier, with school-bus waves, party let-outs, and teens after 8, so keep a buffer.
- Weather is a flat multiplier (clear 1.0, cold 0.8, rain 0.55), and the honor-bowl take of 2.5× is a playful assumption, not a measurement.
- Verdict rules: LIGHTS OUT means the candy is gone before half the kids who come while your light is on have arrived. RUN OUT means it's gone before lights-off. TIGHT means under 10% is left, JUST RIGHT 10–35%, and LEFTOVERS over 35%.
Suggested next steps
- Let people log real counts on the night (a tap counter per doorbell) and fit next year's curve to them.
- Mix candy types (fun-size plus a few full-size bars for costumes that earn them) with per-type run-out times.
- Add a neighborhood mode where several porches share one crowd, so the "full-size house" pulls kids off nearby streets.