Guide — How Mission Works

The basics

Mission organises work in three layers. Everything lives on your Mac (and optionally syncs to your other Macs via iCloud).

1 Workspaces Top-level buckets — e.g. “Work”, “Personal”, or a client name. Each workspace holds its own projects.
2 Projects A body of work inside a workspace — e.g. “Website relaunch”. Projects have settings like schedule, goal, and an optional default assignee.
3 Issues (tasks) Individual items with a title, status, due date, priority, section, and more. This is what you check off day to day.

Open the sidebar to switch contexts, workspaces, and projects. The sidebar groups items under Contexts, Workspaces, and Projects (for projects not in a workspace). All Issues shows tasks across everything when you need one uncut list.

Daily workflow

1 Create a task Select a project, add an issue, or use Quick Capture Uber (⌘⇧K) to capture without leaving your flow.
2 Set what matters Due date, priority, section, estimate, tags — only what you need. Recurring tasks repeat on a schedule you define.
3 Assign (optional) Pick one or more People from the assignee field. See the next section — this does not notify them.
4 Work and complete Move status (open → in progress → done). Changes can be logged in the project journal automatically or by hand.

Views

List

Your main table: sort, filter, inline edit, keyboard navigation. Best for day-to-day triage.

Timeline

Gantt-style schedule view — see start/due dates and how work lines up over time.

Project overview

Summary for one project: progress, schedule, RAG status, and goals at a glance.

Mission Control Uber

Portfolio-wide health, trends, and filters — including “show me everything assigned to this Person.”

Contexts

A Context is a saved smart list — a dynamic view over tasks that still live in their projects. Use it when you want a cross-project slice: everything tagged urgent, all work for a client’s projects, or tasks assigned to a Person label you use for a role.

Not a second project

Creating or completing a task in a Context does not move it out of its project. You add tasks with the + button (full add sheet) and choose which project they belong to. Optional default project on a context speeds that up.

Create a context

1 Sidebar → New → New Context (or create from the bottom New menu).
2 Turn on the filters you want — Projects, Tags, Category, and/or People (assignees). Only enabled filters apply; within tags, matching any selected tag is enough.
3 Save and select the context in the sidebar. Set an optional goal at the top of the list.
4 Reorder with sort set to Manual — order is saved per context, independent of project sections.

Edit filters anytime from Edit Context… in the goal header or the sidebar context menu. Contexts sync via iCloud like projects and tasks.

People & assignees — read this

This is the feature people ask about most. People in Mission are labels you create — not user accounts, not invitations, and not assignments to real humans on the internet.

What “assigning” actually does

When you assign Alex or Backend to a task, Mission stores that name in your database so you can filter, sort, and report consistently. Nothing is sent to Alex. Alex does not get an email, a login, or a copy of the task unless you use some other tool outside Mission.

Think of People as smart name tags — like coloured sticky notes on a whiteboard — not coworkers joining your workspace.

People are for

Tracking who you mean to do the work
Roles or queues (“Design”, “QA”, “Vendor”)
Future teammates before they exist
Yourself under different hats (“Me – deep work”)
Filtering Mission Control or a Context by assignee
Project default assignee on new tasks

People are not

App user accounts or team seats
Email invites or @mentions that notify someone
Access to your Mac or iCloud data
A replacement for Slack, Jira assign, or Asana guests
Required — leave tasks unassigned anytime

How to set up People

1 Open Settings → People (⌘, then the People tab). People are shared across all workspaces and projects — create them once, use everywhere.
2 Add a person Given name, family name, optional nickname and title. Email is optional metadata for your own notes — Mission does not mail them.
3 Assign on a task In issue detail or when editing, open the assignee picker and choose one or more People. You can also set a reporter the same way.
4 Optional: project default In project settings, pick a default assignee so new tasks in that project start with the right label.

Why build it this way?

Mission is built for individuals and small teams on Mac who want structure without enterprise overhead. Many users plan alone but still want to tag work by owner or role before anyone else is involved. Real multi-user collaboration would need accounts, permissions, and servers — Mission deliberately stays local-first with iCloud sync between your devices instead.

If you use iCloud sync, your People records sync to your other Macs signed into the same Apple ID — still not to the human named on the label.

Journal, reminders & sync

Journal

Per-project log of notes and decisions. Automation rules Pro append entries when they change a task so you always know why.

Notifications

Local Mac alerts for due soon / due today / overdue. They fire on your machine — not on an assignee’s phone.

iCloud sync

Free sync of tasks, projects, contexts, People, journal, and more between your Macs. No Mission login. Attachments stay per device until blob sync ships.

How Mission works