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Show HN: General Task, a free task manager for builders (beta)

120 points by jreinstra 4y ago

Hello everyone! I left my job to start General Task a little over a year ago, and have been building a better free task manager with a small team. We aim to be the best place where one can find what’s next in their workday and we integrate with a number of different services to help do that. We’re still in the early stages of a beta, but so far you can: - Create/edit tasks with due dates, priorities, and folders - Drag tasks onto your calendar to block off time to do them (syncs with GCal) - Sync with Linear (JIRA coming soon) to see tasks assigned to you - Sync with Github to see your PRs - Integrate with Slack to make tasks directly from Slack What sets us apart? We know there are tons of task managers out there. We believe ours is different because it is tailor-made for engineers, with integrations for Github PRs, Linear and Slack. We also support dragging tasks onto your calendar, which is usually only found in premium paid products, while our consumer product is free and always will be. Our mission is to make knowledge workers more productive, and we believe the best way to do that is by focusing on software engineers and achieving mass adoption of a free consumer product before releasing a paid product for businesses. Let us know what you think! NOTE: We currently only support Google sign-in, sorry about that! We will be adding more login options soon. If you don't want to sign in with Google, you can see a quick 1 minute demo of our features here: https://youtu.be/NUOIH2On_Nw https://youtu.be/NUOIH2On_Nw

rchandna 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
thecatspaw 4y ago
I hate to be the first comment and be negative, but pleease dont hijack the backbutton.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Yeah, I just noticed that a couple days ago - it's a bug and definitely not our intention to do that. Will let my team know about it now! Edit: it's fixed now
__erik 4y ago
This looks really cool and something I would use, but I'd need to see more on data retention and security. Just by nature of the product it requires sharing a lot of potentially very sensitive information.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! That makes sense. What do you think would make you feel better about our data retention and security? Would something like SOC-2 compliance be helpful?
  - __erik 4y ago
    Data policy, knowing what and how data is stored, would be good enough
    - jreinstra 4y ago
      Got it!
dathos 4y ago
Looks good! Once another sign up becomes available I’ll give it a look
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks! We'll have to add that soon!
rhacker 4y ago
Love the idea. Item becomes a specific calendar thingy. Great job. Please fix the back-hijack to HN though. (it's like forwarding twice for some reason) edit: I see you're aware of it!
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! And yes, we're having someone look at that right now, sorry about that! Edit: it's fixed now
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MH15 4y ago
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Sorry, we're trying to fix that now! Edit: it's fixed now
aussiesnack 4y ago
Looks promising. The task/calendar linkage is a good reflection of how I like to organise my day. Any plans to extend the Github integration to Issues in addition to PRs?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! That's a good suggestion, our next integration is JIRA but we'll definitely add Github issues at some point as well.
Void_ 4y ago
What’s up with all the task managers lately? This feels like the fifth I’m seeing in the past 2 weeks.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jreinstra 4y ago
  It's a crowded space for sure! I personally think productivity is a really important problem facing society and so I don't mind that so many people are trying to do something about it.
akcreek 4y ago
This is a solid take on task management. We've got some similar features in https://hourstack.com https://hourstack.com with dragging and dropping tasks from other platforms into a calendar (team or personal). However, our focus is on tracking time against those tasks once scheduled and then reporting, invoicing, etc. against the work completed. So different end goals. Best of luck to you as it looks like you've got a great start.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Cool, thank you, and best of luck to you too!
aliqot 4y ago
What is the distinction between the purple text and the black text in the Terms of Service?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Oh whoops, that's a bug. We're having someone fix it now!
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Was that from edits made?
    - jreinstra 4y ago
      No, it's just a styling bug, as far as I can tell.
jreinstra 4y ago
Hey, thanks to those who pointed out the back-button override bug. We've just shipped and verified a fix for that!
aliqot 4y ago
Dang I was super excited to try it but I can't use Google. Are there plans to add any other means of signin soon?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  We definitely will be adding other signup options, no ETA on it yet though!
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Thanks looking forward to that and some clarity on pricing.
    - jreinstra 4y ago
      It's free forever for individuals, and we will roll out a paid business product next year.
aliqot 4y ago
What is the distinction between the normal parts and the all-caps portions of the Terms of Service?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  This was something our lawyers recommended. I'm not sure exactly why we do that, but my guess is to emphasize certain parts.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Lawyers before a pricing page, that's interesting. Is this a VC-funded or bootstrapped project?
    - jreinstra 4y ago
      Yep! Our product is free for individuals (paid product coming later for businesses), so we didn't add a pricing page quite yet. We've raised money from friends and family and a couple of funds but consider ourselves pre-seed currently.
      - aliqot 4y ago
        > Yep! Our product is free for individuals (paid product coming later for businesses), so we didn't add a pricing page quite yet. We've raised money from friends and family and a couple of funds but consider ourselves pre-seed currently. Congrats on the launch, thanks for the response
        jreinstra 4y ago
        Thank you!
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    It's funny because it also makes it unreadable.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I'll be honest, you had me sold when you mentioned "single-tasking".
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Haha amazing!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dchuk 4y ago
Looks really nice. Here's my feedback to another app maker that would make any product in this category into a killer tool: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32313583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32313583 " 9 points by dchuk 3 months ago | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Show HN: Emery – Personal productivity workspace I’ve tried a lot of apps like this over the years. Two main things I’ve struggled with with all of them: 1) none seem to handle multiple calendars well. I have a personal calendar, a work calendar, and a side project calendar, I want them all to be independent, have tasks blocked out on them, etc, but still be aware of each other. So for example, I want to schedule a doctor’s appointment on my personal and have my other calendars mirror that time block, but scrub the details/make it generic. Super specific idea obviously, but if I don’t have it I have so much manual overhead aligning everything that I just give up and do it by hand. 2) they are all dogshit slow (not sure about this one, haven’t tried it). The combo of electron apps and what I guess is just calendar synchronization latency makes them have surprise ux patterns and overall just shitty experience in general. A third thing is that I really enjoy planning my life with a kanban, and executing my day from a todo list (scheduled). That’s hard to nail. Last: my notes live separately (as most people’s do I’ve seen anecdotally). I hope someone can really succeed in this space because time blocking is so powerful, but nothing has fit my lifestyle quite right yet unfortunately."
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, this is super helpful to us! We are working to improve our multiple calendar support soon and always keep performance top of mind.
  - dchuk 4y ago
    Happy to help. If you want an advisor of some sort who is a career product leader, does sales now, has an insane schedule, and is also a father of a young kid so has a crazy personal life, I’m your guy. My Twitter handle is in my profile here.
  - neill 4y ago
    Some further feedback, not specific to your tool but because I've seen a few of these recently and would love to find a tool that meets my needs, it's maybe worth saying now- When I see responses like this, instinctively my internal reaction is: "Okay, so they don't have this and say they're working on improvements, but I don't know how effectively they build new features or when this might be released. Will it be a week? A month? 6 months?" I don't know the best solution, but having some more information to answer this would keep me more engaged with products that are being actively developed. I don't want to get bought in to something that iterates at a snails pace, but I could commit myself to trying tools that rapidly iterate and improve..
dcsan 4y ago
I like the look of it, and "single-tasking" is great. It also can block out your calendar so you get less random meetings popup. But I can't see any info on pricing? I see "free to start!" but always worried about roach motel business models - esp since the TOS is soooo detailed this doesn't seem like a happy hacker side project? Am I the product, or just too cynical nowadays? update: after reg i see: > That means we will be keeping our personal productivity solution free forever. so i guess that means you're banking on a 2B version later?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! You are not the product. That's correct, we will release a paid product for businesses next year.
burkaman 4y ago
Looks useful, trying it out. Feature request (once you recover from the hug of death): I'd like to be able to drag emails onto my calendar in addition to Linear issues and Slack messages. Right now it's common for me to have a "reply to x" item on my todo list.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! Yes, we are very keen on adding better email support over time!
stokesr 4y ago
Really love the idea of single tasking! All this talk about how to multitask more efficiently gets old pretty quickly
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks so much - agreed!
programmarchy 4y ago
Looks slick and feels super fast. One thing I like about Linear is having multiple accounts/workspaces and easily switching between them. As someone who manages multiple Gmail accounts and projects, this would be a nice feature. Totally understandable why it's not in the beta, though.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thank you! I'll pass that suggestion along, thanks for the feedback.
Moissanite 4y ago
Calendar integration looks nice; if I ever become a freelancer this is exactly the sort of thing I'll be reaching for. Sadly, many of us are stuck with Outlook - so won't be able to use this app to its full potential.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks! And that makes sense - we'll have to add Outlook / alternative login options soon!
askonomm 4y ago
Awesome! Any plans for a mobile app, or a PWA?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks! Definitely at some point, just not sure exactly when yet!
aussiesnack 4y ago
I think you have a client/server timezone mismatch. When I add a due date, it's momentarily correct, then goes back a day (eg. from tomorrow -> today). I'm in AEDT (currently GMT+11) What's the best way to report issues once this thread has gone stale?
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback - I just passed along to my team! We have a "share feedback" button in the bottom of our sidebar where you can report any issues you have as well.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Looks nice, but I've become kind of jaded on 'task/time management' as a concept. At least for me (and maybe others) I don't want to micro-optimize my day. I'd rather have more room for spontaneous creativity and fun. I don't want to feel like I'm on an assembly line being fed things to do one at a time. And I've also found that focusing too much on small details can cause you to miss big picture work that has much more effect. For example, you optimize preparing for a meeting, but you don't stop to think "maybe I don't even need this meeting?". Or you have very detailed implementation for some feature, but you don't think about maybe a different feature would be more valuable. I have been casually thinking of what a task management solution that encourages more spontaneous and creative work would look like.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  I totally agree. I think it's crucially important that every detail can be backed up by a long term goal and that you have the freedom & visibility in your tracker to make that happen. We wanted to start by doing the fundamentals very well (tasks, basic calendar, etc), but we are very excited to push the envelope of what a task manager does over time and help align your short term actions with what can most effectively advance your goals in the long run.
- neontomo 4y ago
  Have a technical platform that encourages you to be spontaneous sounds a bit paradoxical, but maybe it could do it in a subtle way - so that the user does the creativity part, not being fed "creativity slots" on a conveyor belt like the previous concept. It's worth exploring.
culi 4y ago
First thing I always wanna know with these things is what happens with my data after your servers die? Can I export it? Do you have any API endpoints I can use to hack things my own way? Who really owns it? --- Mentioned apps with how they handle your data: • [General Task](https://try.generaltask.com/ https://try.generaltask.com/) – free, proprietary § ??? • [Emery](https://emery.to/ https://emery.to/) – $7/month, proprietary § Data lives on their server, when your subscription expires your account goes into read-only mode and can still view your data • [Atomic](https://www.atomiclife.app/ https://www.atomiclife.app/) – free tier, proprietary § ???
- scatterhead 4y ago
  First thing I always wanna know with these things is what happens with my data after your servers die? Why? How often does anyone do anything with the data they've exported from some service? Maybe it's just me. But I feel like starting over setting up all your to-do tasks and what-not is going to take less time then writing some script to parse data from one format and upload it to some new system. Especially given that there will be a delta in featuresets.
  - culi 4y ago
    I definitely do so. I've tried half a dozen podcast apps in the past decade and being able to export my subscriptions as an opml or otherwise is something I pay a lot of attention to now. I've had to webscrape or do some really hacky things to access my data one too many times Similar for notes and todo apps. I like to pull my data in, analyze it, visualize it, convert it to other formats, etc Even when I don't yet have specific plans for my data I like to know I can pull it in and make local backups
- jreinstra 4y ago
  We don't have a public API yet but you can look at the network tab in your browser and get your tasks in JSON format relatively easily.
Ancient 4y ago
What's with all the excessive Google permission request ???? Select what General Task can access: - Associate you with your personal info on Google - See your personal info, including any personal info you've made publicly available - See your primary Google Account email address - View and edit events on all your calendars This is too much to ask just to sign up.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Those first three are the basic default Google sign-in permissions (IIRC). The first is your Google ID, the second is your name, and the third is your email address. The fourth permission is so we can show your calendar and allow you to modify it. The app still works if you disable calendar permissions, though. And we will add alternative login methods in the future for those who would rather not authorize their Google account.
- rish1_2 4y ago
  These are the typical standard permissions: 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly', 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events', 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly' This is what I use for my time blocking app project. Contacts are scheduling meeting / events which might not be needed for this project so top two is what I would use for the project
aryehof 4y ago
Just by way of feedback, tried it on my iPad and found it didnt work well enough in Safari for me to want to keep struggling with it. Found drag/drop worked inconsistently, struggled to change task durations on the calendar etc.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Oh, good to know, thanks for sending this feedback over! We haven't tested much on iPad / mobile yet.
sixhobbits 4y ago
I clicked on this thinking it was one of the rare HN projects that is for the "real world" (ie built for an industry that isn't technology) but 'builder' mainly means programmer here, not construction. Looks slick otherwise.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Ah yeah sorry for the confusion, we decided to start with programmers but want to eventually build a tool that works great for everyone.
masterof0 4y ago
It looks good, very similar to Emery. I have a few suggestions: - I want this to work offline, or I will never pay for it. Many reasons: -- No way I'm sharing my work calendar with you(your service) my dude, is actually against company(Google) policy. Many engineers at FAANG and FAANG like (big tech ) companies will love to use such tool(at least I will), they can afford it, and many of them have a strong online presence and can advertise your product for free ( the same way they do it for Obsidian, for example). So you pretty much dropping a huge chunk of your customer base. -- User's data belong to them, many people organize their lives with this type of tool, and what they write there, is not our concern nor you should have access to it. -- Is not too hard to implement client sync, and you can actually offer it as a premium feature. - I know you are just starting up, but maybe you can offer a free trial without logins, so people can try your products without having to make a fake account? - Also, a way to import calendars from Exchange, Apple, Google, ... Congrats for the launch, it looks good. I will follow your journey, if the product change, I will buy it for sure. Love to support small hackers.
- jreinstra 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! It's free by the way!
  - taskforcegemini 4y ago
    *you only pay with personal information that can/will get monetized later on (bait and switch)? I personally would like to try it, it does touch a nerve. But I only use selfhosted services. Have been burned in the past by "free" services that went away.
    - jreinstra 4y ago
      We don't and won't monetize personal information. Our plan is to launch a paid product for businesses next year.
tjohns 4y ago
I'd be much more likely to buy this if it were a local application. At large companies, it's not uncommon to have a security policy that forbids using 3rd party SaaS apps that haven't been formally blessed by IT. Getting that approval is a herculean task. For a task manager I'll use at work, anything that's running in the cloud is essentially off limits as a result.

120 points by jreinstra 4y ago

rchandna 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

thecatspaw 4y ago

I hate to be the first comment and be negative, but pleease dont hijack the backbutton.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jreinstra 4y ago
Yeah, I just noticed that a couple days ago - it's a bug and definitely not our intention to do that. Will let my team know about it now! Edit: it's fixed now

__erik 4y ago

This looks really cool and something I would use, but I'd need to see more on data retention and security. Just by nature of the product it requires sharing a lot of potentially very sensitive information.

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! That makes sense. What do you think would make you feel better about our data retention and security? Would something like SOC-2 compliance be helpful?
- __erik 4y ago
  Data policy, knowing what and how data is stored, would be good enough
  - jreinstra 4y ago
    Got it!

dathos 4y ago

Looks good! Once another sign up becomes available I’ll give it a look

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks! We'll have to add that soon!

rhacker 4y ago

Love the idea. Item becomes a specific calendar thingy. Great job. Please fix the back-hijack to HN though. (it's like forwarding twice for some reason) edit: I see you're aware of it!

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! And yes, we're having someone look at that right now, sorry about that! Edit: it's fixed now
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

MH15 4y ago

jreinstra 4y ago
Sorry, we're trying to fix that now! Edit: it's fixed now

aussiesnack 4y ago

Looks promising. The task/calendar linkage is a good reflection of how I like to organise my day. Any plans to extend the Github integration to Issues in addition to PRs?

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! That's a good suggestion, our next integration is JIRA but we'll definitely add Github issues at some point as well.

Void_ 4y ago

What’s up with all the task managers lately? This feels like the fifth I’m seeing in the past 2 weeks.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jreinstra 4y ago
It's a crowded space for sure! I personally think productivity is a really important problem facing society and so I don't mind that so many people are trying to do something about it.

akcreek 4y ago

This is a solid take on task management. We've got some similar features in https://hourstack.com https://hourstack.com with dragging and dropping tasks from other platforms into a calendar (team or personal). However, our focus is on tracking time against those tasks once scheduled and then reporting, invoicing, etc. against the work completed. So different end goals. Best of luck to you as it looks like you've got a great start.

jreinstra 4y ago
Cool, thank you, and best of luck to you too!

aliqot 4y ago

What is the distinction between the purple text and the black text in the Terms of Service?

jreinstra 4y ago
Oh whoops, that's a bug. We're having someone fix it now!
- aliqot 4y ago
  Was that from edits made?
  - jreinstra 4y ago
    No, it's just a styling bug, as far as I can tell.

jreinstra 4y ago

Hey, thanks to those who pointed out the back-button override bug. We've just shipped and verified a fix for that!

aliqot 4y ago

Dang I was super excited to try it but I can't use Google. Are there plans to add any other means of signin soon?

jreinstra 4y ago
We definitely will be adding other signup options, no ETA on it yet though!
- aliqot 4y ago
  Thanks looking forward to that and some clarity on pricing.
  - jreinstra 4y ago
    It's free forever for individuals, and we will roll out a paid business product next year.

aliqot 4y ago

What is the distinction between the normal parts and the all-caps portions of the Terms of Service?

jreinstra 4y ago
This was something our lawyers recommended. I'm not sure exactly why we do that, but my guess is to emphasize certain parts.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Lawyers before a pricing page, that's interesting. Is this a VC-funded or bootstrapped project?
  - jreinstra 4y ago
    Yep! Our product is free for individuals (paid product coming later for businesses), so we didn't add a pricing page quite yet. We've raised money from friends and family and a couple of funds but consider ourselves pre-seed currently.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      > Yep! Our product is free for individuals (paid product coming later for businesses), so we didn't add a pricing page quite yet. We've raised money from friends and family and a couple of funds but consider ourselves pre-seed currently. Congrats on the launch, thanks for the response
      - jreinstra 4y ago
        Thank you!
- solarkraft 4y ago
  It's funny because it also makes it unreadable.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I'll be honest, you had me sold when you mentioned "single-tasking".

jreinstra 4y ago
Haha amazing!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dchuk 4y ago

Looks really nice. Here's my feedback to another app maker that would make any product in this category into a killer tool: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32313583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32313583 " 9 points by dchuk 3 months ago | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Show HN: Emery – Personal productivity workspace I’ve tried a lot of apps like this over the years. Two main things I’ve struggled with with all of them: 1) none seem to handle multiple calendars well. I have a personal calendar, a work calendar, and a side project calendar, I want them all to be independent, have tasks blocked out on them, etc, but still be aware of each other. So for example, I want to schedule a doctor’s appointment on my personal and have my other calendars mirror that time block, but scrub the details/make it generic. Super specific idea obviously, but if I don’t have it I have so much manual overhead aligning everything that I just give up and do it by hand. 2) they are all dogshit slow (not sure about this one, haven’t tried it). The combo of electron apps and what I guess is just calendar synchronization latency makes them have surprise ux patterns and overall just shitty experience in general. A third thing is that I really enjoy planning my life with a kanban, and executing my day from a todo list (scheduled). That’s hard to nail. Last: my notes live separately (as most people’s do I’ve seen anecdotally). I hope someone can really succeed in this space because time blocking is so powerful, but nothing has fit my lifestyle quite right yet unfortunately."

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback, this is super helpful to us! We are working to improve our multiple calendar support soon and always keep performance top of mind.
- dchuk 4y ago
  Happy to help. If you want an advisor of some sort who is a career product leader, does sales now, has an insane schedule, and is also a father of a young kid so has a crazy personal life, I’m your guy. My Twitter handle is in my profile here.
- neill 4y ago
  Some further feedback, not specific to your tool but because I've seen a few of these recently and would love to find a tool that meets my needs, it's maybe worth saying now- When I see responses like this, instinctively my internal reaction is: "Okay, so they don't have this and say they're working on improvements, but I don't know how effectively they build new features or when this might be released. Will it be a week? A month? 6 months?" I don't know the best solution, but having some more information to answer this would keep me more engaged with products that are being actively developed. I don't want to get bought in to something that iterates at a snails pace, but I could commit myself to trying tools that rapidly iterate and improve..

dcsan 4y ago

I like the look of it, and "single-tasking" is great. It also can block out your calendar so you get less random meetings popup. But I can't see any info on pricing? I see "free to start!" but always worried about roach motel business models - esp since the TOS is soooo detailed this doesn't seem like a happy hacker side project? Am I the product, or just too cynical nowadays? update: after reg i see: > That means we will be keeping our personal productivity solution free forever. so i guess that means you're banking on a 2B version later?

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! You are not the product. That's correct, we will release a paid product for businesses next year.

burkaman 4y ago

Looks useful, trying it out. Feature request (once you recover from the hug of death): I'd like to be able to drag emails onto my calendar in addition to Linear issues and Slack messages. Right now it's common for me to have a "reply to x" item on my todo list.

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! Yes, we are very keen on adding better email support over time!

stokesr 4y ago

Really love the idea of single tasking! All this talk about how to multitask more efficiently gets old pretty quickly

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks so much - agreed!

programmarchy 4y ago

Looks slick and feels super fast. One thing I like about Linear is having multiple accounts/workspaces and easily switching between them. As someone who manages multiple Gmail accounts and projects, this would be a nice feature. Totally understandable why it's not in the beta, though.

jreinstra 4y ago
Thank you! I'll pass that suggestion along, thanks for the feedback.

Moissanite 4y ago

Calendar integration looks nice; if I ever become a freelancer this is exactly the sort of thing I'll be reaching for. Sadly, many of us are stuck with Outlook - so won't be able to use this app to its full potential.

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks! And that makes sense - we'll have to add Outlook / alternative login options soon!

askonomm 4y ago

Awesome! Any plans for a mobile app, or a PWA?

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks! Definitely at some point, just not sure exactly when yet!

aussiesnack 4y ago

I think you have a client/server timezone mismatch. When I add a due date, it's momentarily correct, then goes back a day (eg. from tomorrow -> today). I'm in AEDT (currently GMT+11) What's the best way to report issues once this thread has gone stale?

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback - I just passed along to my team! We have a "share feedback" button in the bottom of our sidebar where you can report any issues you have as well.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

Looks nice, but I've become kind of jaded on 'task/time management' as a concept. At least for me (and maybe others) I don't want to micro-optimize my day. I'd rather have more room for spontaneous creativity and fun. I don't want to feel like I'm on an assembly line being fed things to do one at a time. And I've also found that focusing too much on small details can cause you to miss big picture work that has much more effect. For example, you optimize preparing for a meeting, but you don't stop to think "maybe I don't even need this meeting?". Or you have very detailed implementation for some feature, but you don't think about maybe a different feature would be more valuable. I have been casually thinking of what a task management solution that encourages more spontaneous and creative work would look like.

jreinstra 4y ago
I totally agree. I think it's crucially important that every detail can be backed up by a long term goal and that you have the freedom & visibility in your tracker to make that happen. We wanted to start by doing the fundamentals very well (tasks, basic calendar, etc), but we are very excited to push the envelope of what a task manager does over time and help align your short term actions with what can most effectively advance your goals in the long run.
neontomo 4y ago
Have a technical platform that encourages you to be spontaneous sounds a bit paradoxical, but maybe it could do it in a subtle way - so that the user does the creativity part, not being fed "creativity slots" on a conveyor belt like the previous concept. It's worth exploring.

culi 4y ago

First thing I always wanna know with these things is what happens with my data after your servers die? Can I export it? Do you have any API endpoints I can use to hack things my own way? Who really owns it? --- Mentioned apps with how they handle your data: • [General Task](https://try.generaltask.com/ https://try.generaltask.com/) – free, proprietary § ??? • [Emery](https://emery.to/ https://emery.to/) – $7/month, proprietary § Data lives on their server, when your subscription expires your account goes into read-only mode and can still view your data • [Atomic](https://www.atomiclife.app/ https://www.atomiclife.app/) – free tier, proprietary § ???

scatterhead 4y ago
First thing I always wanna know with these things is what happens with my data after your servers die? Why? How often does anyone do anything with the data they've exported from some service? Maybe it's just me. But I feel like starting over setting up all your to-do tasks and what-not is going to take less time then writing some script to parse data from one format and upload it to some new system. Especially given that there will be a delta in featuresets.
- culi 4y ago
  I definitely do so. I've tried half a dozen podcast apps in the past decade and being able to export my subscriptions as an opml or otherwise is something I pay a lot of attention to now. I've had to webscrape or do some really hacky things to access my data one too many times Similar for notes and todo apps. I like to pull my data in, analyze it, visualize it, convert it to other formats, etc Even when I don't yet have specific plans for my data I like to know I can pull it in and make local backups
jreinstra 4y ago
We don't have a public API yet but you can look at the network tab in your browser and get your tasks in JSON format relatively easily.

Ancient 4y ago

What's with all the excessive Google permission request ???? Select what General Task can access: - Associate you with your personal info on Google - See your personal info, including any personal info you've made publicly available - See your primary Google Account email address - View and edit events on all your calendars This is too much to ask just to sign up.

jreinstra 4y ago
Those first three are the basic default Google sign-in permissions (IIRC). The first is your Google ID, the second is your name, and the third is your email address. The fourth permission is so we can show your calendar and allow you to modify it. The app still works if you disable calendar permissions, though. And we will add alternative login methods in the future for those who would rather not authorize their Google account.
rish1_2 4y ago
These are the typical standard permissions: 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.readonly', 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events', 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly' This is what I use for my time blocking app project. Contacts are scheduling meeting / events which might not be needed for this project so top two is what I would use for the project

aryehof 4y ago

Just by way of feedback, tried it on my iPad and found it didnt work well enough in Safari for me to want to keep struggling with it. Found drag/drop worked inconsistently, struggled to change task durations on the calendar etc.

jreinstra 4y ago
Oh, good to know, thanks for sending this feedback over! We haven't tested much on iPad / mobile yet.

sixhobbits 4y ago

I clicked on this thinking it was one of the rare HN projects that is for the "real world" (ie built for an industry that isn't technology) but 'builder' mainly means programmer here, not construction. Looks slick otherwise.

jreinstra 4y ago
Ah yeah sorry for the confusion, we decided to start with programmers but want to eventually build a tool that works great for everyone.

masterof0 4y ago

It looks good, very similar to Emery. I have a few suggestions: - I want this to work offline, or I will never pay for it. Many reasons: -- No way I'm sharing my work calendar with you(your service) my dude, is actually against company(Google) policy. Many engineers at FAANG and FAANG like (big tech ) companies will love to use such tool(at least I will), they can afford it, and many of them have a strong online presence and can advertise your product for free ( the same way they do it for Obsidian, for example). So you pretty much dropping a huge chunk of your customer base. -- User's data belong to them, many people organize their lives with this type of tool, and what they write there, is not our concern nor you should have access to it. -- Is not too hard to implement client sync, and you can actually offer it as a premium feature. - I know you are just starting up, but maybe you can offer a free trial without logins, so people can try your products without having to make a fake account? - Also, a way to import calendars from Exchange, Apple, Google, ... Congrats for the launch, it looks good. I will follow your journey, if the product change, I will buy it for sure. Love to support small hackers.

jreinstra 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback! It's free by the way!
- taskforcegemini 4y ago
  *you only pay with personal information that can/will get monetized later on (bait and switch)? I personally would like to try it, it does touch a nerve. But I only use selfhosted services. Have been burned in the past by "free" services that went away.
  - jreinstra 4y ago
    We don't and won't monetize personal information. Our plan is to launch a paid product for businesses next year.

tjohns 4y ago

I'd be much more likely to buy this if it were a local application. At large companies, it's not uncommon to have a security policy that forbids using 3rd party SaaS apps that haven't been formally blessed by IT. Getting that approval is a herculean task. For a task manager I'll use at work, anything that's running in the cloud is essentially off limits as a result.