Life Maintenance

Checklists

Checklists are lists of tasks you work through together. Some build themselves from your maintenance schedules; others you make yourself for one-off or recurring jobs. Where schedules are one task that recurs, checklists are many tasks at once.

Three kinds of checklists

The Checklists page filters into All / Maintenance / Prep / To-Do:

  • Maintenance Checklist. Auto-synced from your maintenance schedules. It gathers upcoming maintenance into one checklist so you can knock it out in a session. Read-only and always current.
  • Prep Checklist. Also auto-synced. For each task it lists the Tools to have and the Steps to do, tied to the item and its due date, so you can prep before you start.
  • To-Do. Your own custom lists, one-off or recurring. This is the kind you create by hand.

The synced Maintenance and Prep checklists sit pinned at the top under a Synced header. You do not build or edit them; they follow your schedules automatically, and each task links back to its schedule.

The Checklists page with the Maintenance and Prep synced checklists at the top, the All / Maintenance / Prep / To-Do filter, and the In Progress, Due Today, and Pending Approval stats.
The Checklists page with the Maintenance and Prep synced checklists at the top, the All / Maintenance / Prep / To-Do filter, and the In Progress, Due Today, and Pending Approval stats.

The stats at the top

Three stat pills summarize your lists:

  • In Progress. Checklists you have started but not finished.
  • Due Today. What is on the docket right now.
  • Pending Approval. Checklists waiting on a reviewer (a Family-plan workflow, below).

Making a custom to-do checklist

  1. From the Checklists page, click New checklist. It opens the checklist form as a To-Do.
  2. Give it a name and an optional due date.
  3. Add tasks by typing them in.
  4. Optionally link a person, pet, or location, set it to recur, and (on Family) add approvers.
  5. Save.

Once saved, the checklist becomes an active occurrence that shows up on your Home page and Calendar until it is complete.

Recurring checklists

For things you do on a rhythm (weekly chores, quarterly deep clean), set the checklist to repeat. When the next due date comes around, we automatically create a fresh occurrence with the same tasks, reset to unchecked.

Past occurrences are kept in your history so you can look back at what got done.

Sharing on Family

On the Family plan, anyone in the household can check off items. A Mine / Household toggle at the top lets owners and admins switch between "just my checklists" and "everyone's checklists." Non-admins always see Mine.

Approval workflow

If you add approvers to a checklist, the workflow gains a review step. When the assignee checks off the last item, the checklist's status flips from In progress to Pending approval. The assignee's checkboxes lock, and the approver sees two actions:

  • Approve. Closes the checklist. If the checklist is points-enabled, the button shows the reward (for example, Approve (+5 points)) so the approver sees it before tapping. The points credit on tap and feed Goals.
  • Mark incomplete. Sends the checklist back as not-done. Confirms first, so a stray tap on a shared device does not undo someone's work.

Approvers can find their queue via the Pending Approval stat and the /checklists?filter=pending_approval view, or the amber badge on the kiosk top bar.

This pattern works great for kids' recurring chore lists. The kid checks the items off; the parent reviews and approves at the end of the day.

Reviewing past days (book view)

Recurring and synced checklists get a chevron + date navigator at the top: tap to walk back through roughly the last 90 days, to walk forward. We call this the "book" view because each occurrence is like a page in a book.

Past days are read-only, so you see what got checked off and what didn't, but you can't change items retroactively. You can still Approve or Mark incomplete a past day's checklist if you didn't get to it then. If multiple days are pending, a small pill shows the count so you can jump to the oldest one.

History and archiving

Use View history in the filter bar to browse completed checklists over time. When the list gets cluttered, Bulk archive clears out old occurrences in one pass.

When to use a checklist vs. a schedule

| Use a checklist when… | Use a schedule when… | | --- | --- | | You have many tasks to do together. | You have one task that recurs. | | The list changes each time. | The pattern is the same each time. | | There is a clear "start" and "end." | The task is ongoing. | | You want a single completion event. | You want a history of completions. |

What to read next