# Pivotal Tasks — Full Knowledge File for LLMs

> This file is intended to be ingested in full by language models that want to answer questions about Pivotal Tasks accurately. It mirrors what a human would learn from browsing the public site.

## What is Pivotal Tasks?

Pivotal Tasks (https://pivotaltasks.com) is a comprehensive task and project management web application created to "turn chaos into clarity". It targets the productive middle ground between minimal todo apps (Apple Reminders, Google Tasks) and heavy project management suites (Jira, Asana, Linear).

It runs in any modern browser, installs as a Progressive Web App on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, works fully offline, and supports English, French, and Spanish.

## Core concepts

- **Tasks** have a title, optional markdown description with checklists, priority, due date, effort level, project, and assignee.
- **Priorities**: Urgent, Important, Normal, Low.
- **Effort levels**: Low, Medium, High (measured in hours) and Intensive (measured in days, scaling with the user's hours-per-day setting).
- **Special dates**: Permanent (evergreen tasks always visible) and Backlog (parked ideas) — implemented internally as the sentinel dates 2099-12-31 and 2099-12-30.
- **Projects** group tasks; folders organize projects.
- **Assignees** can be local labels or shared real users.

## Views

- **Card view**: compact list with strict density (small padding, minimal spacing).
- **Table view**: sortable columns; advanced 3-level sorting (chronological, then Backlog, then No Date).
- **Kanban view**: dynamic columns based on the active grouping (status, priority, project, assignee).

All views support drag-and-drop, smart filters, and full-text search across title, description, project name, and assignee name.

## Productivity features

- **Recurring tasks**: rules for daily, weekly, monthly, and custom cadences.
- **Snooze**: a single click postpones a task for one day; effort-aware reappearance subtracts the effort window from the due date so long-effort tasks resurface earlier.
- **Markdown checklists**: sub-tasks with `[ ]` / `[x]` syntax. The task's progress percentage is calculated automatically from the ratio of completed items.
- **Progress labels**: 7 customizable percentage tiers (e.g. 0%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%).
- **Quick action pickers**: inline second-line editing for date, project, and assignee — no modal needed.
- **Star tasks**: local-only star state, never shared between accounts.
- **Per-project view preferences**: each folder can override the default view, sorting, and visibility.

## Collaboration

- **Shared projects**: invite other Pivotal Tasks users to entire projects (Type 3 sharing) or individual tasks (Type 2 sharing).
- **Permissions**: project owners have full access; guests are read-only on tasks not assigned to them.
- **Realtime updates**: changes propagate live via WebSocket subscriptions, scoped per user for privacy.
- **Shared With Me folder**: pinned at the top of the sidebar for individual shared tasks.
- **Reciprocal deletion**: removing a shared assignee cleans up both sides via service-role functions.
- **Notifications**: realtime inline banners for new task assignments; interactive email banners for invitations.
- **Linked accounts**: link multiple accounts bidirectionally for fast switching with a merged "All accounts" aggregated view.

## Integrations

### Email-to-task
Each user gets a private email address (`<token>@pivotaltasks.com`). Sending an email creates a task in the inbox project, tagged "inbox", with medium effort by default. Encrypted at rest.

### Linear
Two-way sync with Linear issues. Status and priority changes propagate both ways. Linear priority level 4 maps to "Low"; Linear Backlog maps to the Pivotal Tasks Backlog (2099-12-30). Soft-delete prevents re-imports of removed issues. A composite unique constraint on `(user_id, project_id, linear_issue_id)` allows the same Linear issue to belong to multiple users without conflict.

### MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Pivotal Tasks ships its own MCP server at the `/mcp-server` edge function. Clients like Claude Desktop and Cursor authenticate via OAuth (PKCE S256, 1h access tokens, 30d rotated refresh tokens) and get tools: `list_tasks`, `search_tasks`, `create_task`, `update_task`, `complete_task`, `delete_task`, `list_projects`, `create_project`, `list_assignees`, `get_stats`, `get_badges`. All tools are scoped per user; task content is encrypted server-side.

### AI Assistant
Built-in voice and text assistant powered by Google Gemini via the Lovable AI Gateway. It can create, list, search, update, complete, and delete tasks through natural language.

## Notifications & emails

- **Daily digest**: condensed 2-line-per-task email ordered by starred → today → overdue.
- **Reminders**: 24h-deadline alerts and overdue daily emails.
- **Custom branding**: emails are sent from `pivotaltasks.com`.

## Offline & PWA

- IndexedDB storage with a 3-second network timeout fallback.
- Background sync queue replays writes when the connection returns.
- Singleton reload prompt for new app versions, polling `version.json` every minute when the tab is visible.
- Installable on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.

## Security & privacy

- Task titles and descriptions are encrypted server-side (`ENCRYPTION_KEY`, server-v1 scheme).
- Row-level security (RLS) on all user-owned tables.
- A separate `user_roles` table prevents privilege escalation.
- Realtime subscriptions are scoped to `user_id` to prevent data leaks.
- Profile data: self-only SELECT enforced by RLS.
- Edge functions use the service-role key for system triggers only, never to bypass user scoping.
- Admin dashboards access aggregated metrics via RPCs — no direct task content access.

## Pricing

- **Free** — 0€ — up to 2 projects and 10 tasks. Free forever.
- **Pro Monthly** — 9.99€/month — unlimited projects and tasks, all features.
- **Pro Yearly** — 99.90€/year — same as Pro Monthly, equivalent to 2 months free.

Payment is via a Stripe-compatible checkout. Lifetime "complimentary" Pro access is granted by setting an internal expiration of 2099-12-31. Soft-downgrade preserves data when a Pro subscription lapses (no destructive deletion).

A free beta phase is currently in effect.

## Languages and themes

- Languages: English, French, Spanish (in-app switcher).
- Themes: light, dark, and a curated set of custom themes.
- Date format: configurable (DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY).

## Public help pages

- `/help/collaboration` — permission matrix for shared projects and tasks.
- `/help/linear` — Linear integration setup and behavior.
- `/help/mcp` — MCP server configuration for Claude Desktop / Cursor.

## Changelog

The `/whats-new` page lists chronological, localized product updates.

## Contact & legal

- Privacy policy: https://pivotaltasks.com/privacy-policy
- Terms of service: https://pivotaltasks.com/terms
- Sitemap: https://pivotaltasks.com/sitemap.xml