Parallax — User guide

The mental model

Three layers, top to bottom: contexts, tasks, and dependencies. Move down a layer to focus, up a layer to plan.

1. Sidebar = your map. Pick a context to dive into one stream of work; pick Plan to plan the day across all contexts; pick Schedule to see the day as a timeline.
2. Each task carries a deadline plus an optional mode — "deadline" if it must be done by, or "scheduled" if it's simply happening at that time.
3. Tasks can require other tasks. The dependency graph shows what blocks what; the orange highlight marks what's workable right now.

Plan, Schedule, and contexts

1. Plan opens the daily-planning dashboard: a quick-capture input, today's tasks across every context, and the Fitness & Health overview.
2. Schedule opens a vertical timeline of today's tasks positioned by their deadline.
3. Click any context name in the list to drop into that context's dedicated view (its own task list, dependency graph, and timer).
4. How-to (book icon) brings you here.

Create a new context

1. Hover the Contexts or Chores category header — a small + appears next to the label.
2. Click +. An inline name input opens beneath the header.
3. Type a name and press Enter (or click the green check) to create. Esc or × cancels.

Read the row colours

1. Default — neutral row, normal hover.
2. Active — orange highlight on the context you're currently viewing.
3. Green — every task in this context is done.
4. Grey / dimmed — every undone task here is in "scheduled" mode (already timetabled, nothing to chase).

Collapse and expand

1. Click the panel-close icon at the top-right of the sidebar to collapse it to icons only.
2. When collapsed, the parallax logo at the top doubles as the expand button — hover it and it swaps to the panel-open icon. Click to expand.

Capture a task

1. In a context view: type the title, optionally pick a deadline, then press Enter or click +.
2. In the Plan view: do the same, plus pick which context (or Chores) the task belongs to using the Tag with selector below the input.
3. On mobile, the datetime input sits on its own line below the title so you have full width to type.

Edit a task

Click the task title to inline-edit, or click the pencil icon (visible on hover) to open the full edit panel.

1. Title — click to edit, Enter saves, Esc cancels. Clicking another field saves silently and stays in edit mode.
2. Icon — click the icon at the start of the row to cycle through Priority (★ filled), Goal (★ outline), and Action (▲).
3. Deadline — click the deadline chip on the row to open the popover.
4. Requirements — open the edit panel (pencil icon) and use "+ Add requirement" to wire dependencies.
5. Click outside the edit panel to save and close. Or use the Save changes button at the bottom-right of the panel.

The deadline popover

Click any deadline chip to open it. Three sections, top to bottom:

1. Mode — pick Deadline (must be done by) or Scheduled (planned at this time). Scheduled tasks read as calmer in the list and don't pressure with red urgency tones.
2. Quick set — replace the deadline with now + 5 minutes / 15 mins / 30 mins / 1 hour. Closes the popover on click.
3. Day — Today snaps the date to today's. Other day reveals an inline date picker.
4. Time — native time input. Auto-applies on change.

Complete a task

1. Click the round tick at the right end of the row.
2. The countdown freezes to a green "done" badge — no more "5h late" pressure on something you've already finished.
3. In the Plan view, done tasks fall to the bottom of the list and fade to 50% opacity. Hover to bring them back to full opacity if you need to re-toggle.

Reorder by drag

1. In a context view, grab any (undone) row and drop it where you want it. The cursor turns into a grab handle, the source row dims, and the drop edge of the target shows a 2px primary border.
2. In the Plan view, drag-reorder is enabled when Sort by is set to Plan order. Switch to Plan order, drag, drop. The dragged ranks persist across both views.
3. Top of the list = highest priority. Drop a row at the top and it gets the highest rank.

Top controls

Beneath the create form, three labelled controls let you tune the view without leaving the page:

1. Tag with — picks the context for the next task you create. Defaults to "none"; you must pick one before the + button enables.
2. Sort by — Deadline (chronological by due time, latest at top) or Plan order (your manual rank ordering, drag-to-reorder enabled).
3. Deadline — Timer shows a live countdown ("in 2h 14m"); Time shows the absolute clock ("6:00pm" today, "Tue 6:00pm" otherwise). Tone (red / amber / neutral) stays consistent across both display modes.

Reading a row

1. Icon (★ ★ ▲) — priority indicator; click to cycle.
2. Title — click to inline-edit.
3. Context chip — coloured by category (orange = Contexts, amber = Chores, green = Fitness & Health). On mobile the chip collapses to a category icon to save horizontal space. Click it to jump into that context's view.
4. Deadline chip — your live countdown or absolute time, in the colour of its urgency.
5. Tick — mark done. Pencil — open the edit panel.

Row state cues

1. Orange border — workable now (deadline today/sooner and not blocked).
2. Dimmed grey background — every undone task in this row's context is scheduled (consistent with the sidebar grey-out).
3. 50% opacity — done. Sinks to the bottom of the list automatically.

Read the timeline

1. Hour gridlines run from morning to night with time labels in the left gutter.
2. A live "now" indicator (a primary-coloured dot + line) crosses the timeline at the current minute and updates every minute.
3. Each card sits at its deadline minute. The left-border accent encodes category: blue for Contexts, green for Fitness & Health, amber for Chores.
4. When two or more tasks fall close in time, they render side-by-side instead of stacking on top of one another. Lane width adjusts automatically per cluster.
5. Items outside the visible 6am–11pm window appear in an "Outside the timetable" list below — never silently hidden.

Card states

1. Red ring + Overdue pill — undone, deadline passed.
2. 60% opacity — done.
3. Click the tick on a card to mark done; click the context chip to jump into that context.

What's workable right now

1. A task is workable if it's not done AND every requirement it has is done.
2. Workable tasks highlight in orange — both as rows and as nodes in the graph.
3. Tick a task done and any task that depended on it instantly becomes workable.

Add or remove a requirement

1. Open task B's edit panel (pencil icon).
2. Under Requirements, pick task A from the "+ Add requirement" dropdown. A appears as a chip.
3. Click the × on a chip to detach. Click Save changes (or anywhere outside) to close.

Read the dependency graph

1. Bottom row holds tasks with no requirements (roots).
2. Each row above depends on tasks below.
3. Click any node to open that task's edit panel.
4. The active task (whichever you're editing) and its chain highlight in light orange.

Run a Pomodoro

1. The timer's task name auto-tracks the next workable task. Tick that task done and the timer rolls forward to the next workable item — no manual reassignment.
2. Click Start. The chip flips to "Focus"; the bar fills in deep orange.
3. When work ends, the timer auto-rolls into a Break (green). Skip ends the current phase early; Reset returns to Idle.
4. Tweak Work / Break minutes at the bottom of the card. Changes apply on the next phase, or immediately when idle.

Detox & Deep Work overlays

1. Two launchers sit at the bottom of the timer: Detox (blue) and Deep Work (orange).
2. Detox is a true break — the overlay shows "Step away. The work will wait." and runs a 25-minute relaxation timer.
3. Deep Work pins to the active task name and runs a 90/15 work-break cycle.
4. Nothing else on the dashboard is clickable until you press Back to focus. That's the point.

The pill

1. Always visible at the bottom-right, with an orange ring that fills as the 10-minute window elapses.
2. When it hits 00:00 it auto-restarts — no action needed to keep the cadence going.
3. Click to expand a 300px panel with quick-log buttons.

Logging an entry

1. Pick a category: Event (○), Feeling (=), Note (−), or Task (→).
2. An input appears for an optional one-line note. Submit with Enter, or "Skip note" to log just the category.
3. Esc cancels without logging.
4. Categories you've already logged in the current window get a green tint plus a count badge. The highlight resets when the window cycles.
5. Today's log at the bottom shows recent entries — most recent 12 in the current session.

Worth remembering

1. Use Plan in the morning to triage; use Schedule mid-morning to sanity-check whether the day fits.
2. Use Scheduled mode for recurring blocks (workouts, meetings, walks). They sit on the timeline without ever turning red.
3. Use Deadline mode for things that must ship by a time. The countdown will go red within an hour, amber within four.
4. Drag-reorder in a single context for the order you'll attack them; switch the Plan view to Plan order to see all today's tasks in that priority across contexts.
5. On mobile the navbar pins to the top, the create-form datetime stacks below the title input, and context chips collapse to icons. Hard-refresh after deploys if a stylesheet looks stale.
6. Edits persist live. Closing the panel — by Save changes, the top check, or clicking outside — is the same action: "I'm done editing." Delete is the only destructive button.