I started building Super Productivity in late 2016 because I needed to log time against my Jira tickets. Ironically, I've never had to do that again on any project since.
But I kept building it anyway and for some reason I couldn't stop doing it. 8 years later it's a local-first task manager with time tracking and integrations for Jira, GitHub, GitLab, and others. Everything runs on your device - no cloud, no account required.
Why local-first? Three reasons:
- I didn't want to run servers or deal with auth systems
- I care about not having my work habits tracked
- I needed something that works offline
- Most of the companies I worked for would not allow for putting that kind of data into a random cloud service
Biggest lesson from 8 years: saying no is sometimes harder than building features. Every "quick addition" someone requests has hidden complexity and long term costs. I know how much effort goes into drafting ideas, so I often had a very hard time saying no to new additions, especially if people already provided the code and even more if it was good clean and tested code.
Now there is a plugin system with community plugins and this makes it much easier.
Still figuring out: sustainable funding without ads or selling data. Currently, it's donations + my own time. Would love to hear how others approach this.
But I kept building it anyway and for some reason I couldn't stop doing it. 8 years later it's a local-first task manager with time tracking and integrations for Jira, GitHub, GitLab, and others. Everything runs on your device - no cloud, no account required.
Why local-first? Three reasons: - I didn't want to run servers or deal with auth systems - I care about not having my work habits tracked - I needed something that works offline - Most of the companies I worked for would not allow for putting that kind of data into a random cloud service
Biggest lesson from 8 years: saying no is sometimes harder than building features. Every "quick addition" someone requests has hidden complexity and long term costs. I know how much effort goes into drafting ideas, so I often had a very hard time saying no to new additions, especially if people already provided the code and even more if it was good clean and tested code.
Now there is a plugin system with community plugins and this makes it much easier.
Still figuring out: sustainable funding without ads or selling data. Currently, it's donations + my own time. Would love to hear how others approach this.
Repo: https://github.com/johannesjo/super-productivity Try it: https://super-productivity.com