Tasks (Kanban / Gantt)

A Tasks bundle (.lnt) opens a task board with Kanban (status columns, drag the cards), Gantt (effort-based schedule) and calendar views. Each task can have a title, a column (status), an effort in hours and an associated .md note. Tasks are also reachable by AI, via MCP and CLI (create, move, update, read/write the note).

The task note is a note like any other. The embedded panel now shows the same screen as .md notes: Ctrl+E cycles text editor, reading and formatted editing, and the note theme, outline and properties all apply. It still saves by itself — including what you just typed in formatted mode, when you switch task or close the tab. Opening the note in its own tab also follows your view preference instead of forcing the text editor.

The three modes

Each board has a mode, and each mode includes everything from the one before: Essential (●○○) — board, table and calendar, with priority, due date, tags, checklist, recurrence, subtasks and assignees; most boards stay here, and nothing is missing —; With schedule (●●○) — plus the Gantt: drag the start and the end, give the duration in days, link one task to another, print and copy the schedule —; and Full project (●●●) — plus effort in hours, work calendar, lag and the four link types, critical path, slack, constraints, baseline, variance and workload by assignee. A new board starts in Essential.

You change the mode with the button on the top row of the toolbar (next to the counter, with the steps), by clicking the Gantt tab of an Essential board, or in Task settings → Board mode. Changing mode deletes nothing: when you move down, the screen says what still applies and can no longer be edited there (a lag, the baseline), and it all comes back when you move up. The duration in days sets the end when no end date is declared; without it, the end comes from the effort in hours. Dragging the end of a bar saves the duration.

Board and fields

Per-task fields: besides status and effort, each task has a priority (colors the card border and sorts the Table), a due date (red chip when overdue), multiple tags, a subtask checklist (progress badge on the card) and recurrence (completing a recurring task spawns the next occurrence). Edit them from the context menu (Table/Kanban) and in the Properties panel.

Kanban board: you can group the columns by status, priority or tag, create swimlanes, set per-column WIP limits (the header turns red when exceeded) and sort the cards. Linear-style keyboard navigation: ←/→ move the focus, Ctrl+←/→ move the card, N creates, Space completes/reopens and Delete deletes. There is also the Calendar view (by due date).

Task files. The Files button (the paper clip) on the toolbar shows, in the right-hand column, the files folder of the selected task. It lives next to the board — Project.lnt.attachments/Review contract [a1b2c3d4e5f6]/ — and also appears in the file tree, where the files open, move and get backed up like any others. The folder is only created with the first file: drop files on the panel (with Shift they are moved instead of copied) or use Attach files. The card shows the paper clip with the number of files, and the new occurrence of a recurring task uses the original's folder. The code in brackets is what links the folder to the task: renaming the task, or the folder while keeping the code, breaks nothing. Renaming or moving the board in LightNote takes the folder along; renamed in Explorer, the board finds it again when opened, through a hidden file (.lightnote.json) kept inside it — and if the folder is in use at that moment, it stays linked under its old name until it is free. Deleting the board asks whether the folder goes to the Recycle Bin too.

The Files panel as a list. When there is room, it shows the Size and Modified columns next to the Name; when narrow, only the name remains, and the size and date appear in the tooltip. Clicking a header sorts by it (names in natural order, folders on top), clicking again reverses, and the choice and the widths are remembered. Ctrl+F5 or the Refresh button rereads the folder — useful on a network folder, where the automatic change notice can fail. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V copy, cut and paste files, also to and from Windows Explorer; pasting attaches to the selected item, and the first file is pasted from the menu of the empty area. The context menu also has Open with..., Properties and Move to Recycle Bin…. All of this also applies to the Custom table (.lnd).

Views, filter and totals

Views in tabs. Each tab is a view of the same board — Board, Table, Gantt or Calendar. The + creates another; right-clicking a tab renames, duplicates, deletes or changes its layout. Each view keeps its own display options — the board sorting and grouping, the table sorting, grouping and totals, the Gantt scale — and they come back when you reopen. The filter applies to every view, as in Bases and the Custom table: what it hides disappears from the board, the table, the Gantt and the calendar at once. Analysis is a display mode, not a view.

Capture and lists: the tray's Quick task understands natural language (e.g. Pay bill tomorrow 5pm #home !high). The arrow of the New task button has the task templates; the arrow of the Filter button has the lists by due date (Today/Next 7 days/Overdue), the saved filters and Show archived; and the tray/Launcher show reminders for tasks due today or overdue.

Tab toolbar. The top row has the view tabs, the task counter and the ⋯ menu — with Delete task, Dependencies and History (Git) for the selected task, Export CSV and Task settings; the bottom row has the actions and the search (Ctrl+F). The filter conditions and the due-date list show up as tags below the bar: click to edit, × to remove. In the Table, the footer offers Calculate under each column — sum and average of the effort, the earliest or latest date, counts — over what the table shows. In the Table, Group splits the rows by status, priority, tag or assignee — the same groups as the board, and a task with two tags shows up in both; clicking a group's row collapses it.

Subtasks and assignees

Subtasks. Alt+Shift+→ (Indent) makes the selected task a subtask of the task right above it, at the same level; Alt+Shift+← (Outdent) moves it back one level. The context menu also has Add subtask. A task that groups others becomes a summary task: in bold, with the collapse arrow and its number in the WBS column (1, 1.1, 1.2…); its start and end come from the children, its effort is the sum and its % is weighted by effort — so they are not edited there. A dependency on the summary applies to all its children. Collapsing hides the children in the Table and the Gantt. The board shows only the work tasks; Group → Show summary tasks brings the summaries, with the 2/4 subtasks badge. Deleting a summary moves its children up one level.

Assignees. The Assignees field of the Properties panel takes free names, separated by commas. The initials appear in a circle on the card, always in the same color for the same person, and the Table has an Assignee column. The board can be grouped by assignee — one column per person plus a No assignee one — or get Swimlanes by assignee; dropping a card in someone's column hands the task to that person, and creating it in the column assigns it right away. A task with two people appears in both columns. Assignees and the parent task reach the Bases as task.assignees and task.parent.

The project fields (parent task, assignees, lag) live in a separate file inside the board, plan.ndjson: an earlier version of LightNote opens the same board as a flat list, without losing anything.

Gantt (With schedule)

The Gantt is available from the With schedule mode on. Each task is a bar in its status color, with the done part (the %) in full color and the name beside it when it does not fit inside; dependencies are right-angle arrows from the end of the predecessor to the start of the task; a task with no effort and no end is a milestone (diamond); and a task with a schedule problem gets a warning triangle, with the reason in the tooltip. The Start, End and % columns sit on the left, and the non-working days of the work calendar are shaded. The Scale goes from day to quarter, with Fit to project; Ctrl+wheel also changes the scale, and Today scrolls to today.

Gestures: dragging the bar of a task with a fixed start shifts its dates; dragging one with a relative start changes its lag — it stays linked, and its successors move along; dragging a summary task takes its fixed-start children with it. Dragging the right end sets the duration in days. The dot at the end of the bar links tasks: drag it onto another bar to create the dependency (finish→start); a link that would close a cycle is refused, with the reason. Click an arrow to select it: Delete removes it and a double-click edits the lag (working days; negative is a lead). Right-clicking a bar offers Add subtask, Indent/Outdent and the dependencies.

Critical path, baseline and outputs

Critical path, slack and baseline belong to the Full project mode; printing, copying as an image and copying as Mermaid are available from With schedule on.

Critical path. The Slack column (in the Gantt and the Table) says how many working days each task can slip without delaying the end of the project; the slack of a chain is the whole chain's, and a summary task shows its children's smallest slack. In the Schedule button, Highlight critical path paints the tasks with no slack, and the arrows between them, in red — delaying any of them delays the project. The highlight is a view option and comes back when you reopen.

Baseline. Save baseline keeps each task's current start and end; from then on a thin grey bar under each bar shows the saved plan, and the Table's Variance column says, in working days, how far the end has moved (positive, in red, is a delay). Saving again replaces the previous one (the app asks); Clear baseline... deletes it.

Outputs. Copy as Mermaid takes the schedule as a ```mermaid block (a gantt) to paste into a note: the dates are the calculated ones, each top-level summary task becomes a section, and with the highlight on the critical tasks get crit. Copy as image takes the whole schedule in paper colors. The Print button on the Gantt toolbar opens the preview (landscape), with the date header repeated on every page; the PDF comes from the same preview.

The baseline lives in plan.ndjson, alongside the other project fields. Slack, the critical path and the calculated dates also reach AI through MCP (list_tasks).

Link types, constraints and workload

The four link types belong to the Full project mode. The link you create by dragging the dot is finish → start: the task starts when the other one finishes. Right-click the arrow to choose the type: start → start (they start together), finish → finish (they finish together) or start → finish (the task finishes when the other one starts). The arrow leaves and enters at the ends the name says, and the lag counts from them. In the Dependencies column the type appears as an abbreviation, with the lag — for example Prototype (SS+2). The type and the lag can also be chosen in the Dependencies dialog, which the Edit... button in the properties panel opens.

Start no earlier than. In the properties panel, this date keeps the task from starting before it, even when the predecessors would let it start earlier; the Table gains the Not before column when any task has one. The due date is the deadline: when the planned end goes past it, the task gets the warning, its Slack becomes negative and it joins the critical path together with its predecessors. Nothing is moved.

Workload by assignee. In the Schedule button, Workload by assignee shows under the Gantt a band with each person's hours per day (from the week scale up, per week), on the same axis as the bars. It counts what is left: the effort minus the % done, spread over the working days from today on and, among several assignees, in equal parts; a late task piles its remainder on the next working day, and completed tasks do not count. Above the calendar's hours the cell turns red, and work with no assignee comes last. The band goes along in the copied image and in the printout.

Milestone with progress. From With schedule on, a milestone with predecessors shows next to its name how much of the work leading to it is done, weighted by effort. The type, the constraint and the due date also reach the AI through MCP: update_task accepts link_type and not_before, and list_tasks with board also returns the board mode.

Note, archiving and settings

Embedded note: selecting a task shows its .md note next to the views (autosaved when you switch tasks); the Note button toggles the editor and Open note in a tab opens it in its own tab. Archiving a task hides it from all views; the Show archived toggle reveals the archived ones (dimmed).

In Task Settings you can set Archive completed tasks after N days: when the board opens, tasks that have stayed in the final column longer than that are archived automatically (0 = off).

The note opens embedded by default (double-click the task) and saves itself as you type — Tasks never ask "save?" on close. The AI actions (Ctrl+K / Ctrl+I) work inside the note.

Edit the board with AI

Edit with AI…, on the board's toolbar, takes a request in plain words — move to Done what has a complete checklist, create a task for each item of this list, mark as urgent what is due this week — and the AI proposes the changes: creating and filling in tasks (title, status, priority, tags, due date, assignees, checklist and, depending on the board's mode, start, end, percent and effort), archiving tasks and creating or renaming statuses and tags. The AI never deletes a task: what it takes off the board is archived, and comes back with one click.

The review is the same as in the custom table: nothing is saved before Apply, each change shows the before and after, and whatever you untick is left out. In the Table view, Only the selected tasks limits the request to the selected rows. After applying, a strip at the top of the board offers Undo, which reverts everything the AI changed at once. The dates calculated by the schedule never go out or come back: the AI only touches the declared dates.