Trish Putnam
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thePlan

A local-first planning system that connects deep task hierarchy, real calendar constraints, and deliberate scheduling. Built as a daily driver, not a productivity demo.

Task lists and calendars were solving different halves of the problem

Most task tools can hold a list. Most calendars can hold an appointment. I needed a system that could preserve the full shape of the work and still answer the daily question: what can realistically fit now?

thePlan grew from that gap: a personal planning system with real hierarchy, calendar-aware scheduling, and enough operator control to adjust when the day refuses to cooperate.

A plan that ignores the calendar

isn't much of a plan.

Scheduling has to respect hard events, pinned work, preferred time maps, deadlines, and the operator's right to change course.

Build the system in waves, and make every boundary visible

01

Keep the hierarchy useful

Epics, projects, sections, tasks, and nested subtasks preserve context without flattening every kind of work into the same row.

02

Schedule against reality

Google and Microsoft calendar events, pinned blocks, deadlines, and painted time maps constrain the schedule instead of being treated as suggestions.

03

Treat operations as product work

Local-first deployment still needs authentication, persistent storage, backups, remote access, migrations, and recovery instructions.

04

Do not hide unfinished work

Exit records name what shipped, what was deferred, and what remained imperfect. A release boundary is useful only when it tells the truth.

Hierarchy, time, and operator judgment in one system

Product owner, daily user, and acceptance gate

I defined the product rules, divided delivery into release waves, made scope calls, tested the system through daily use, triaged defects, and decided what counted as shipped.

AI collaborators did substantial implementation, test expansion, analysis, and documentation work under my review. The arrangement increased delivery speed without moving product authority or acceptance responsibility out of human hands.

Sustained delivery, not a weekend prototype

  • React and TypeScript client with a FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and Docker Compose stack
  • Wave-based delivery with explicit exit criteria, ADRs, deferrals, and known gaps
  • Calendar integrations, constraint-aware scheduling, recurrence, reminders, and mobile use
  • Local-first operations with authentication, backups, migrations, and remote access
  • More than 250 backend test functions across product, scheduling, auth, and integration behavior
  • A defect backlog shaped by actual use, including fixes for fairness, capacity, hierarchy, and recovery

Inspect the product and its delivery evidence

the repository includes the working application, architecture, decision records, release exits, operator documentation, and the gaps that remained visible after ship.