Project canvas

Everything you started.
Everything you stopped.
Nothing you owe.

Brassdeck is a canvas for people running more projects than they can work on at once. It shows what is actually moving, stays silent when nothing needs you, and treats stopping something as a decision you made rather than a task you failed.

4stages
1next step each
0notifications
0things installed

Not a status. A question.

Every project answers one thing: how real is it. That turns out to be more useful than asking whether it is done, because most of what you are carrying was never going to be done this week and both of you know it.

Spark

Written down and not started. It costs nothing to hold, and getting it out of your head is the entire job of this stage.

Shaping

You are working out what it actually is, before spending real hours finding out it was something else.

Building

Actively being made. These are the ones drawing on your week, and the count is worth watching.

Live

Out in the world. It can stay on the canvas as something you tend, or leave it entirely.

What is inside

Nine surfaces, and most of them are quiet most of the time.

01

The canvas

Everything on one grid, arranged the way it makes sense to you rather than sorted into somebody else's columns. Drag a card anywhere. The position is the memory.

02

The next step

One field per project: what is the very next thing to do. When that field is empty, it is almost always the reason nothing has moved in three weeks.

03

Focus

What is genuinely in motion and what it costs. Four things being built at once draw on the same hours, so each moves slower. Worth knowing before you pick up a fifth.

04

Review

Silent unless something has gone past a check-in you set yourself. No daily digest, no badge, no red dot waiting for you in the morning.

05

Everything

The full list, longest untouched first, so the one you have been quietly avoiding sits at the top instead of buried under things you did yesterday.

06

Parking and dropping

Both are decisions and both keep their reason. Parked projects come back on a date you pick. Dropped ones stay where they are. Neither is a delete.

07

Patterns

Every stop records why. After a handful it can tell you whether you stall because things are unclear or because you are waiting on other people. Those are different problems with different fixes.

08

Ask

Question the canvas in plain language. What is stalled, what moved this week, what have I not touched since June, what am I waiting on someone else for.

09

Sharing

Send one project to someone as a link. They see that project and nothing else on your canvas, and they do not need an account to open it.

What it says to you

Three lines taken out of the app itself, unchanged. They are the argument.

A long list here is the app working rather than a backlog you owe anyone.

On sparks

Dropping is not failure and it is not a delete. The project stays here with your reason attached, which is worth more later than the project was.

On stopping

Nothing needs you right now. This page will have something for you when one of them falls outside the window you set, and not before.

Review, on a normal day
Why Brassdeck exists

Built because every other tracker turns a good month into a list of debts.

Open a normal project tool after a busy month and it shows you fourteen overdue items, a red counter and a completion percentage. None of that is true. You did not fail fourteen things. You picked five, moved them, and let the rest wait, which was the correct decision. The tool simply has no way to represent a decision, so it files it as a failure.

Brassdeck was built for the other case. Someone with more ideas than hours who wants to see what is genuinely real this week without being billed for everything that is not.

  • Parked and dropped projects are left out of every count
  • No completion percentage, because there is no total
  • No due dates unless you actually want one
  • Nothing is overdue unless you said when to check on it
  • Nothing to install, it runs in the browser
Where your attention is
6 things are actually in motion. Everything else is either a spark you have not started or something you already stopped, and neither is asking anything of you.
Spark 7
Shaping 2
Building 4
Live 0

4 things are being built at once. They draw on the same hours, so each one moves slower than it would on its own. There is no correct number and this is not a limit.

Four things to learn, then it gets out of the way.

01

Write it down

Anything you are turning over. It lands as a spark and costs nothing to keep there indefinitely.

02

Say how real it is

Spark, shaping, building or live. One click, and the card changes on the canvas.

03

Name the next step

The very next thing to do, in your own words. This is the field that decides whether a project moves.

04

Let it stay quiet

Set how often each one should be checked on. Brassdeck speaks up when something falls outside that, and not before.

Brassdeck is invite only.

It is in daily use and not open for sign-ups yet. Send a message and tell me what you are running. If it is a fit I will set you up myself.

Already have an account? Open it at brassdeck.scalewiseva.com