How it works
Sprint planning for one brain, minus the ceremony.
Five ideas do all the work in Mustard: cycles, points, velocity, rollover, and capacity. None of them needs a stand-up, a certification, or somebody whose job title is “process.” Here is each one, in the order you meet it.
Get early access- Cycles: a week with a start, an end, and a list you agreed to.
- Points: small relative sizes instead of invented hours.
- Velocity: what you actually finish, learned over a few weeks.
- Rollover: unfinished work moves forward, quietly.
- Capacity: the week split across projects, totalled before you promise it.
The loop
Capture everything. Commit to a week. Close it.
Mustard borrows the two planning habits that survive contact with real weeks: the capture-and-sort habit from GTD, and the short-commitment habit from agile teams. Minus the ceremony either one usually drags in.
- 1
Capture
Everything lands in the inbox. Type it, forget it, keep going.
- 2
Clarify
When you have a minute, give each thing a project and a size, or delete it. The backlog holds what is real.
- 3
Groom
Before you plan, a ready check: is it sized, is it clear, could you start it Monday? Only ready work gets picked.
- 4
Plan
Pick a week’s worth into the next cycle. Velocity tells you if it is too much.
- 5
Work
The cycle is the only screen you need to live on.
- 6
Close
When the week ends, close it. Unfinished work rolls forward. A short retro: what got done, what did not, how it felt. Then plan the next one.
Six steps, one loop, no meeting required. The rest of this page takes each idea inside it in the order you meet it.
Cycles
A week-shaped commitment
A cycle is a stretch of time with a start date, an end date, and the tasks you have agreed to do inside it. One cycle is active at a time. That is the entire model.
Why a week? A day is too small to plan against. Anything unfinished by six o'clock reads as failure. A quarter is too big to feel: you can lose three weeks inside one and only notice in the last. A week is short enough that you still remember Monday on Friday, and long enough that a bad Tuesday doesn't sink it.
Everything you have not committed to lives in the backlog, where it is safe and out of sight. The cycle is the screen you live on.
Points
Small, honest sizes, not hours
A point is a relative size, not a duration. A 1 is “I'll knock that out.” A 3 is “that's most of an afternoon and I know how.” A 5 is “that has a surprise in it somewhere.”
Hours lie, and they lie in a predictable direction. You estimate the typing and forget the deciding, the reviewing, and the email that comes back on Thursday. Points don't ask you to predict the future. They ask you to compare this task to the last one that felt like it. You are far better at that, and it takes two seconds instead of a negotiation with yourself.
You don't need a numbering system with a name. Pick small numbers, stay roughly consistent, and the arithmetic starts working after two or three cycles. Consistency matters more than accuracy here: a point only has to mean the same thing to you next week as it did last week.
Velocity
Learned from what you actually finished
After a couple of cycles, Mustard knows something you don't: how many points you really close in a week. Not how many you planned. How many got done.
So when you're loading up next week, it says the quiet part out loud. “You usually finish 12 points. You've planned 23.”
That's the whole intervention. It doesn't lock the cycle, block the save, or turn anything red. Advisory is the design, not a limitation: some weeks you genuinely know something the average doesn't, and you should be allowed to overrule it. The number only makes the choice conscious. Overcommitment is a decision you make on Monday and discover on Friday; velocity moves the discovery to Monday.
See what actually fits before you commit to it.
Get early accessRollover
Unfinished is not unforgiven
Close a cycle with three tasks still open and those three move into the next cycle. If there isn't a next cycle yet, they go back to the backlog. Nothing is deleted, nothing is marked failed, and nothing collects a small red badge that follows you around.
This is the part people don't believe until they've used it. In most systems an unfinished task becomes evidence: overdue, escalating, faintly accusing. Here it becomes an input. It was 3 points, it's still 3 points, and it goes into next week's math alongside everything else.
Guilt is a terrible planning signal. It makes you avoid the app, and avoiding the app is how a list dies. The rollover is deliberately boring so that opening Mustard on a bad Monday costs you nothing.
Capacity
Split the week before you promise it
Most weeks aren't one thing. There's a client build, a retainer, and the product you keep swearing you'll ship.
Allocate points per project and read the total before you commit: 6 to the redesign, 4 to the retainer, 3 to your own thing: 13 against a velocity of 12. That's a week. Six and six and five is not a week; it's an apology you'll be writing on Thursday.
The whole trick is seeing the sum before you say yes rather than after. A personal timeline that spans every workspace you belong to (so the same week stays visible even when your work lives in three different clients' accounts) is on the roadmap.
Sharing
One project, not your whole life
Invite a client or a collaborator into a single project and that is exactly what they get: that project's tasks. Not your other clients. Not your backlog. Not “book dentist.”
There is no view that quietly leaks the rest, because the boundary is the project itself rather than a permission you have to remember to switch off. That's what makes it safe to keep your own life in the same tool as your paid work, which is the only way one list ever actually works.
Capture stays just as quick. Type “invoice ~acme friday 5pm” and Mustard reads the ~project, the date and the time out of the sentence. An AI assistant can add, list, and complete tasks for you too (Mustard speaks MCP): “put that in my week” does something.
Fair questions
Things people ask before signing up
Do I need to know scrum to use this?
No. There is no stand-up, no retro, no grooming session, and no roles to hand out. The words cycle, point and velocity were invented by software teams, but you can use all three without ever learning the ceremony that grew up around them. If you can answer “is this one bigger than that one?”, you know enough to start.
Why estimate in points instead of hours?
Hours ask you to predict the future. Points ask you to compare a task to a similar one you already finished: a question you answer faster and more honestly. Points also feed velocity: after two or three cycles Mustard can tell you how many you actually finish in a week, which is the number that decides whether next week is realistic.
What happens to tasks I do not finish?
They roll into the next cycle. If there is no next cycle yet, they return to the backlog. Nothing is deleted and nothing is flagged as failure: the task simply carries its points into next week’s arithmetic.
Is Mustard for solo work or for teams?
Both, at small sizes. One person plans their own week; a team of two to five plans theirs, with capacity per person so nobody quietly drowns. It is not built for departments and is not trying to be: the model stops earning its keep around the point where you would need an org chart.
Can I see my work on a timeline?
A Gantt view is on the roadmap, alongside an Eisenhower matrix for triage. Today the week is the view: the active cycle, what is committed, what is left. The long view is coming: the project-manager ritual that usually rides along with it is not.
How does sharing stay scoped to one project?
An invite is to a project, not to your account. The person you invite sees that project’s tasks and nothing else: your other projects, your backlog and your personal tasks stay invisible to them. It is the same boundary everywhere in the app, so there is no setting you can forget to switch off.
What will it cost?
Pricing is not set yet. Waitlist members will hear the details first and get in first.
Who can see my tasks?
Only you, unless you share a project. Sharing is per project, and workspaces stay separate: a client invited to one project sees only that project.
Is there an app for my phone?
It is a web app built to work in your phone browser. There is no native app to install today.
When does it launch?
We are aiming for November 2026, possibly sooner. The waitlist is the only announcement channel: one email when it opens.
Early access
Next Monday shows up either way. Show up to it planned.
Join the list and two things happen today, not at launch. You get the week-shaped method in your inbox (it works on paper, before the app exists). And you're first in when it opens, while we're still two people who read every reply.
One email now with the method. One at launch, maybe two if something big lands. No newsletter.