Help & getting started

The core loop is five moves:

1. Brain dump anything into the inbox — no fields, just type and press Enter (or / to jump to the capture bar).
2. Review each item under Needs review: break it into steps, add it as a single to-do, save it for later, or delete it.
3. Break down big things into small, concrete steps with an AI assist — then tweak the list until it feels right.
4. Focus one step at a time with the timer, or just tick steps off directly.
5. Complete work to move it into the Completed bucket and earn points toward your streak.

Items in Needs review show a freshness pill that ages over time: Recent → Aging → Overdue → Way overdue. After a while an item asks “still needed?” — choose Still need it to reset its clock or Dismiss to stop the nudge. Use Save for later to take something you are not ready for out of the queue, so it stops asking. You can tune the tier thresholds under Aging & reminder on the Settings page.

Nothing is stuck where it landed. Drag a row onto another list to move it — or, for exactly the same result without dragging, use the row’s Move to control and pick the list by name, which is also the way to do it from the keyboard. The lists are Needs review, Multi-step to-dos, Single-task to-dos, Saved for later and Completed, and a move is announced either way, so you are told which list an item left as well as where it arrived.

When you break a task down, Claude proposes small steps. In the editor you can: ask for Fewer steps (consolidate) or More steps (split further), Add a step manually, drag the grip handle to reorder, remove a step, or send a step back to reviewas its own bigger task. Type free-form guidance in the “Tell Claude how to adjust” box anytime.

Not every step needs the timer — on a task you can hit Focus for a timed block, or complete a step directly.

Opening a step shows one number and one action. Pick how long you want from the duration chips(the step’s own estimate is already selected), then press Start focusing. While the timer runs you can Complete step, nudge the clock by a few minutes either way, or Pause.

Pausing is real: the session is saved, so you can close the tab, come back later or open it on another device and pick up where you left off — the clock does not keep draining while you are away. When a paused session exists, the step offers Resume with the time remaining, or Start freshif you would rather begin again. Choosing “Start fresh” only reveals the duration chips; nothing is discarded until you actually start, and you can back out with Keep my paused session.

The Ring timer style doubles as a slow breathing pacer: from the moment you start, four seconds growing, six seconds settling back. It runs for the whole session — through a pause and out the other side — and stops when time is up. Follow it if you want something to steady yourself against, ignore it the rest of the time; it never moves the clock or the buttons, and it needs no setting of its own. The other three timer styles do not breathe, so if you want it, pick Ring under Focus timer → Timer style. If your system asks for reduced motion, the ring simply holds still.

Finishing a step moves you on by itself. Inside a task with several steps, completing one counts down five seconds and then opens the next step — on its start screen, so you still choose a length and press Start. It does not start the timer for you. Press Go now to skip the wait, or Stay here to stop the countdown and stay on the finished step; Escape stops it too, from wherever your keyboard happens to be, so you never have to find a button inside five seconds. The countdown also pauses while the panel has keyboard focus, and Done for now leaves the run altogether.

Finishing a whole multi-step task never moves you on by itself — that finish deserves a pause, so the next task is offered rather than taken. Hyper focus mode is what extends the same countdown to single-task to-dos, chaining one straight into the next. It is off by default, it covers single-task to-dos only (steps inside a task are not affected by it), and you turn it on or off on the Focus page — or by accepting the offer that appears when you run out of steps. It is remembered per browser rather than per account, so your phone and your laptop can be in different modes.

Focus music: ten lo-fi tracks are bundled with the app, so a session always has something to play — even offline, and even on a brand-new install. Whoever runs your instance can add more tracks from a store they run themselves, which is switched off unless they set it up. Either way your browser never contacts that store: the app fetches the audio itself and serves it from its own address, so listening never puts you in touch with anywhere else. If that store is missing or having a bad day you get the bundled ten and the music still plays. Music is on to start with — if you would rather work in silence, one switch turns it off: Focus timer → Focus sounds on the Settings page. That switch is the only music setting there, on purpose; which playlists and which track you pick from the player while a session is running, because that is a decision you make while listening rather than one to make in advance. During a session that player gives you play/pause, previous/next, volume and progress, plus Shuffle. The playlist moves itself along when a track ends and only starts over once every track has played, so you should not hear the same thing twice in a row. It follows the timer: pausing pauses the music, resuming resumes it, and ending the session stops it. Turn on Pause music and timer togetherin settings and it works both ways round — the player’s own pause button then stops your session too, and playing again resumes both.

Also in Focus timer settings: four timer styles, Keep screen awake, an Alarm at time’s-up, and Minimal / distraction-free, which strips the screen back to the countdown and its controls while the timer runs. Worth knowing: minimal mode also hides the music player mid-session — the music keeps playing, there is just nothing on screen to control it until you pause.

The top bar carries a one-tap shortcut to the timer, so starting a session never costs a trip through the menu. It is on to start with; Focus timer → Shortcut in the header hides the button, and the focus timer stays in the menu either way.

Library gathers everything you have reviewed, under four tabs: Single-task and Multi-step for work in progress, Saved for later for anything parked, and Done for finished work. Nothing has moved house — these are the same lists the inbox page keeps below its review queue, so you can work from either. The one difference is Done: the inbox shows a short preview of your most recent completions, with a count of how many you finished today, while Done is the whole history. Opening a multi-step row expands its steps in place, so you can carry on without leaving the page.

Activity is where the points and streaks land: what you earned today, your current streak, your best streaks, and badges that fill in as you reach them. It also holds the end-of-day round-up — a short recap of the day written for you when your workday ends, which you can also trigger early to see what it looks like.

Its settings sit in two places, which is worth knowing before you go looking. When your workday ends and whether it is emailed to you are on the Activity page itself, tucked under the round-up. Whether it also raises a desktop notification is a separate switch, under Notifications on the Settings page — turn that off and the recap still appears on the page, it just does not come and find you.

Off until you turn it on. Tick Show the shopping list under Shopping list on the Settings page and a Shopping list entry appears in the menu, alongside a trolley button in the top bar. Turning it back off hides the list without deleting it — everything is still there if you switch it on again.

It is deliberately a plain list, not a kind of task: no estimates, no steps, nothing lands in your calendar, and ticking something off does not touch your streak. Add a line, tick it, rename it, or delete it. While the list has anything on it the inbox shows a one-line reminder of how many items are waiting, which you can dismiss.

The list has its own Saved for later shelf for things you only buy occasionally. It shares a name with the Library tab and has nothing to do with it — the two are separate, and a shopping item never becomes a task or appears as an inbox row. (The reminder above is a count of the list, not the items themselves.) Nothing comes back off that shelf on its own; you pull an item up when you want it again.

Switch between the calm Plain voice and the playful snack-themed voice, set your freshness thresholds, choose your notifications, adjust the appearance, connect your integrations, and set the name the app calls you on the Settings page.

Appearance covers the colour scheme, how completed items are struck through and ticked, and the typeface the whole app uses. The scheme has three settings and starts on Follow my system, so by default the app matches your device — including any automatic day/night schedule it already has, which is why there is no separate timer for it here. Light and Dark override that.

Two of the four typefaces are there to make reading easier — Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic — so if the default is hard going, that is the setting to try first.

Notificationsis where the round-up, aging reminders and the daily review nudge are switched on or off, and where the nudge’s time is set. They are desktop notifications, so your browser has to grant permission first — until it does, the switches save but nothing arrives. The page offers you that permission prompt when it can.

Integrationsholds two, and both are yours alone rather than the instance’s: connect Google Tasks to schedule your steps into your own account, and create a calendar feedyour calendar app can subscribe to. Treat that feed’s address like a password — anyone who has it can read your step titles and times without signing in, so regenerate it if it gets out. You can turn either off again, and a single task can be added to a calendar as a one-off file without connecting anything.

The corner of the top bar shows your provider username until you tell it otherwise. Account → Your name sets what it calls you instead; it saves as you type, changes nothing about how you sign in, and emptying it goes back to the username.

Both controls below live under Account on the Settings page. That section appears once you have an account of your own — a guest sandbox does not, so it is not shown there.

Take a copy with you. Download my data (.zip) builds one archive of everything in this account: your tasks and their steps, your brain-dump inbox, the coaching conversations, your settings, and your scheduled work as a calendar file. The same data is written several ways so you are not stuck with one tool — a Markdown file you can read anywhere, CSVs for a spreadsheet, and a complete JSON copy. A README inside explains each file. Three things are left out, and all three are keys rather than records: your Google connection, any API key you have stored, and the secret address of your calendar feed — which you can copy any time from Settings → Integrations → Calendar subscription. Everything else this app holds about your account is in the download, the private note whoever invited you wrote on your invitation included.

Delete your account. Delete my account opens a confirmation you have to type the word delete into, because this is not something to do by reflex. When it goes through you are signed out and cannot sign back in, and your Google Tasks connection is removed here — nothing inside your Google account is deleted. Your tasks, steps, notes and settings are then held for a short window so an accident can be undone: ask whoever runs the instance within it. To be straight about a gap: that final removal is done by hand today, not by a scheduled job. The confirmation itself names the exact number of days, and the Privacy Policy covers backups, which are deleted on their own schedule.

If you are the instance owner, the delete control is not there: yours is the only account that can manage the instance, so shutting it down is a deployment job rather than a settings one.

Signed-in guests can try the full flow with a daily cap on AI breakdowns; when the cap is reached (or the AI hiccups) you still get a hand-built starter plan you can edit. The workspace owner has higher limits and can pick the breakdown model.