Balane Plan 1.0
Day planning that actually plans the day
A to-do list tells you what is open. Balane Plan tells you what you will finish by 6pm, in which order, and why that order.
The app knows how long work really takes you, it knows your calendar and your load, and out of that it builds a day it can justify.
Free account, no card · iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, browser
- 08:30Focus · Import module (1/2)90 min
- 10:00Team weekly60 min
- 11:00Buffer · recovery15 min
- 11:15Focus · Meier quote45 min
- 12:00Lunch45 min
- 12:45Small stuff · 3 tasks35 min
- 13:20Focus · Import module (2/2)90 min
- 6
- Platforms
- 2
- Languages, complete
- 100%
- Readable offline
- RLS
- On every row
The difference
List versus plan
A list is a pile of wishes with checkboxes next to them. A plan is a claim about your day that can turn out wrong — which is exactly what makes it worth something.
Now
One question, four answers
The home screen answers exactly one question: what now. It works out how much uninterrupted time is left before your next meeting, asks about your energy — the one input no app can measure — and puts four suggestions in front of you.
- Every suggestion carries its reason: deadline, follow-on work it unlocks, project switching cost, matching length, energy, place.
- The score is explicit rather than opaque. It counts, among other things, how much work finishing this unlocks transitively, and how late the latest possible start would be.
- One click starts the work and the clock.
- 1Finalise the Meier quote45 min · Client workdue tomorrow · unlocks 2 tasks
- 2Test coverage, import module60 min · Developmentno project switch · fits the block
- 3Question for the accountant15 min · Internalblocks close-out · short
- 4Rework the onboarding page90 min · Growthlatest start in 4 days
Today
The day as a surface, not a list
The calendar view draws the whole working day: an hour is 64 pixels tall, a block is as tall as it is long, the now-line moves with the clock. Work is placed into the real gaps in your calendar — minus buffers.
Recovery is not free time
Concentration does not come back the second a meeting ends. Your learned recovery time is spent as a buffer instead of being claimed as free.
Hard work into the morning block
Demanding work into the long morning block, small stuff into the leftovers. One project at a stretch instead of five. At most seven context switches a day.
Divisible work gets divided
Focus blocks between 25 and 120 minutes. Divisible tasks are split and the parts numbered. Indivisible ones never are.
Tomorrow and next week too
Page forwards and backwards through the days. A future day is planned from its own start, not from the current time.
Measurement
The app learns how long you actually need
Not a pomodoro timer, but the instrument everything else is built on. Start, pause, resume, done — every transition goes through the server, so the measurement survives app restarts and device changes.
Pauses carry a reason
Break, blocked internally, waiting on someone, meeting, interruption, task switch, end of day. That is exactly what teaches the app what really holds you up.
Adding time afterwards is allowed
People forget to hit start. Without that path the sample would be skewed and everything learned from it worthless.
Waiting is not working
The two are kept apart. Task details show where the time actually went.
Learned per person and kind of work
Your correction factor per domain, your productive hours, your recovery times, your switching cost between two projects.
Load
At 4pm there is only one sensible question
Push on or stop. The app answers it from six measured quantities — active minutes, unbroken stretch, context switches, interruptions, meeting load, share of hard work — each normalised against a normal day for you, not against a number from a blog post.
- Fresh
Good moment for the hardest task.
- Warm
Keep going.
- Strained
Ten minutes away from the desk.
- Empty
Small stuff only — or stop.
Overviews
Five views of the same work
Not a second tool and not a second copy of the data. The same tasks, five questions.
Projects
A list with progress, deadlines, risk and dependencies.
Board
Kanban. Dragging changes status and nothing else. Every column reads like an agenda: earliest deadline first.
Timeline
The bar is not invented — it runs from the latest possible start to the deadline. No deadline, no bar.
Overview
Where the open work actually sits: client work, internal, growth, optional. If a share is more than 8% off target, the card says so.
Matrix
Eisenhower, but honest. Urgency from real deadlines and remaining work, importance from the class of promise.
Plus an eight-week capacity forecast and a what-if simulation. Moving a project is never a single change — everything hanging off it moves too, and usually something else becomes possible earlier. Both are on screen before anything is written.
Artificial intelligence
Three separate questions, three separate answers
In Balane Plan, AI is not a switch somebody else flipped for you.
Whether at all.
A real switch per workspace. Off means no note, no task title, no context leaves the database towards a model — not even towards one of ours. The server refuses, so nothing depends on the app behaving itself.
By whom.
An ordered list with a veto per provider. European first by default (Mistral, IONOS, your own endpoint), then American (Anthropic, OpenAI), then DeepSeek, then the platform, and the on-device model last.
On whose bill.
Your own key: no quota, no metering on our side, your invoice. Without your own key, a monthly balance measured in money rather than in requests — a long note costs more than a short one.
And with no network and no model, interpretation still runs: a built-in, inspectable reader recognises domain, duration, deadline and project.
Everywhere
On the Mac, a Mac application
Not a phone app in a window. A full menu bar built from the same command list as the shortcuts — a menu entry and its shortcut cannot drift apart.
The app survives a tunnel
Every server answer to a read request sits on disk. Every change that cannot go out queues up and is sent later. Whatever deliberately does not work offline says so — better honest than pretending.
- ⌘N
- New task
- ⌘⇧N
- Quick capture
- ⌘⇧P
- New project
- ⌘R
- Replan
- ⌘K
- Search
- ⌘⏎
- Start suggestion
- ⌘.
- Stop work
- ⌘1–⌘5
- Navigation
Your data
Built to be leavable
Export in two formats
JSON for a machine, a single Markdown file for a human. Complete, because the export asks the table catalogue rather than a hand-written list.
Delete the account for good
A tool where people keep their work has to be leavable. The GDPR says the same (Art. 15 and 17).
Access rules live in the database
Row-level security on every row, behind every report too. A client check is a suggestion; a trigger is a rule.
Attachments inherit their rule
A file can never be more public than the task it hangs on.
Common questions
How is Balane Plan different from a to-do app like Todoist or Things?
A to-do app manages a list. Balane Plan produces a schedule: it reads your calendar, knows your real working speed per kind of work from measured sessions, and places tasks into the remaining gaps — with buffers, breaks and a ceiling on context switches. Whatever no longer fits is named rather than quietly pushed to tomorrow.
Do I have to use AI for the planning?
No. The planning maths runs without any language model — it lives as database functions on the server. AI is only used to interpret free-form input, and even there a built-in, inspectable reader works offline. The AI switch can be turned off completely per workspace; the server then refuses to pass anything on.
Which calendars can I connect?
Any calendar that hands out a private iCal address — Google, Outlook, Apple, team calendars. The address is read on the server and never returned to the app. In 1.0 it is read-only: the app writes nothing into anyone's calendar.
Which devices does Balane Plan run on?
iPhone, iPad, Android, macOS, Windows and the browser. German and English, both complete. There is no Linux build in 1.0.
What does Balane Plan cost?
Free is free for good: 3 active projects, one person, 30 days of history, 100 MB of attachments. Pro is €9.99 a month or €99.99 a year, both including VAT, and lifts the limits: unlimited projects and people, full history, 10 GB of attachments, calendar write access and team sharing. You pay through Lemon Squeezy, the App Store or the Play Store.
Does the app work without internet?
For reading, yes. Every server answer sits locally on disk, changes queue up and are sent later. Three things deliberately do not work offline — creating a project and getting its id back, starting a work session, asking a model — and the app says so instead of hiding it.
Your first planned day takes four questions
Working hours, areas, first project, first task. After that the app plans. Nobody lands on an empty screen with no instructions.