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Show HN: I built a tool for repeatable checklists (steplist.app)

117 points by dbreunig ↗ HN
For a long time (after devouring Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto), I've noticed a gap in the productivity tool market—most tools don't cater well to repeatable checklists. Task managers handle one-off tasks effectively, but falter with routines. On the other hand, project management software often feels overly complex. What I wanted was in the Goldilocks Zone between Todoist and Jira.

For my own personal use, I created StepList. I've used it to assist and track workouts, my daily workday, software deployment and setup, household management, and more. Over the last year I've prepared StepList for sharing with others, and it's finally ready. It's designed to be unobtrusive and straightforward, allowing you to focus seamlessly on your tasks.

Key features include:

Easy List Creation: Quickly make lists with basic formatting options.

Search and Access: Find your lists and those shared by others.

Efficient Execution: Perform tasks swiftly, whether on a computer or mobile browser.

Flexible Scheduling: Set up lists to be done once or on a recurring basis, with email reminders.

Simple Delegation: Assign lists via email, no StepList account needed for collaborators.

StepList is fairly vanilla Rails 7 app. I've found Hotwire to be a powerful tool for building apps that work well on mobile and desktop (though in a few key places, I eschew it to keep things fast).

StepList is free to use, with a $5/month premium plan for unlimited scheduled, delegated, and private lists.

- Drew

74 comments

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leesalminen
Neat! Congrats on the launch.

I built something similar as a feature embedded in a niche product aimed at helping manage a specific type of business many years ago.

The most popular part of the feature was the gamification built on top of reporting. Managers enjoyed the checklists being completed (and reported) more accurately. Staff enjoyed getting a (small) raise for being on the leaderboard.

Basically we just tracked who specifically marked an item off the checklist as complete. Then provided reports (and printable awards) to management.

The business would then implement a program like “whoever completes the most tasks per quarter gets a $0.50/hr raise”.

These checklists were things like “Front of house AM” “Back of house Lunch” etc. with a step by step list of things that needed to be done.

Just throwing that out there as an idea for a future iteration for you.

dbreunig
That's great! Thanks for the annecdote.

I've thought this is a well matched tool for small businesses, like cafes and repair shops with low-tenure workers and onboarding them quickly. If there's success here, I'll roll out Teams as a feature, which is about 80% done and hidden behind some feature flags.

taskforcegemini
this could backfire and it is possible only mgmt likes it. There's always people who are good at closing tickets but not good at actually solving anything.
leesalminen
Yes, it could. Largely depends on the team, industry, etc.

In our little niche the median age of a typical employee is ~21. The tasks are things like “mop the floor”.

Yes, maybe someone half-asses mopping the floor to get the points.

I’ve met many a 20-something daily user of the software who comment positively on the Daily Checklist feature. I’m sure there are those who disliked it too and just didn’t say anything.

all2
I've built several checklists that I come back to.

I have one for weekend plane trips, one for short hikes, one for camping, one for road trips.

It's always nice to be able to go back to a checklist and not have to remember all the stuff that needs to be packed. It's also good to be able to update the checklist mid-trip with a "man, I wish I had a..."

For repeatable tasks I have a habit tracker on my phone, it's free and does what I need it to do. When I'm near my phone later I will update with which one it is.

Congrats on the launch! I'll definitely give yours a try.

walthamstow
Interesting to read that your main uses for this would be packing for trips. I started building a packing app last year but never followed through. On Reddit r/onebag they use lighterpack a lot, but I think it's rubbish and is ripe for replacement.
jjj123
It takes some doing, but you can build a pretty competent trip planning/packing app all within something like Airtable or Notion.

This is what I use, I have a db called “trips”, when a new page is added it pre-fills with a generic trip packing checklist that I can customize.

mthoms
I did this as well but the problem I ran into is that Airtable is (or used to be?) terrible on mobile. Having just a single description field accompanied by a single checkbox in one view takes up two lines in the mobile ui.
walthamstow
Does this cater for the same item, a toothbrush for example, being in multiple pack lists?
jjj123
Yeah it works fine, when you click the “new page” button the template just gets duplicated from the base. So toothbrush will be duplicated for each new trip, checking one off won’t affect the others.

To be clear: it’s not a table of items to check off, it’s a table of packing list pages, within each page is a simple checklist.

ceejayoz
Oh, I've always wanted something along these lines. I've yet to find an app that handles "this thing, if I'm late, still needs to be on-time next time" (like a mortgage payment) versus "this thing, if I'm late, should move all future occurrences accordingly" (like cleaning the toilets).
savolai
Things the ios app has this, though I find the UI somewhat confusing.
atestu
Omnifocus has repeatable tasks and you can pick whether they repeat based on the due date (once a month, like the mortgage), or on completion date (I use this for cleaning chores, so if I'm late to clean the bathroom, don't tell me to do it in 2 days because it's Saturday, tell me to do it 1 week from now)
dbreunig
It does, as does Todoist and other task managers. But it's never a first class citizen and takes a backseat to one-off task management. For many, these features or even Google Sheets or the Notes app is sufficient. It wasn't for me, though.
corps_and_code
Gonna pile on to other's suggestions, and say Todoist can do this. You can schedule a task to happen every four weeks, and the next occurrence happen four weeks after you complete it (even if you're a few days late) or four weeks from when it was last due. Pretty nice for my needs, might fit yours too.
saw-lau
I use an app called 'Alarmed' on my iPhone for this. It's got everything I need, in particular you can repeat items on a fixed period or 'x days from the time you actually manage to tick it off', which is great. It's free with a one-off IAP to unlock extra features (can't remember what they are - I paid it years ago).

http://yoctoville.com/

czbond
Very cool - nicely done.
ryann_wisc
Looks great. Minor nitpick: it's pretty standard to have a pricing page available on the main toolbar, that lists the limits of the free version
dbreunig
Thanks. I have a better "premium description and ux" on my kanban backlog. Just had to shove this out the door at some point!
sameoldtune
This is amazing! I have tried using checklists and the like in trello and iPhone reminders/notes but like you say it is tedious to repeat.

Growing up my mother was a checklist fanatic. Any time we would go camping or traveling there was the packing checklist. Grocery staples checklist. There was the yearly checkup/vision/dentist checklist for all her kids. Weekly chore checklist. Bills paid checklist. I’d not be surprised if she had a checklist-making checklist.

Her technology skills were limited, she made all of these with some crapware create-a-card software and printed them out on sheets of address label stickers. But I’ll be damned if we ever forgot to pack anything on road trip.

I’ll definitely give this a try.

imadj
Congrats on the launch

I'm curious about the early phase since you mentioned originally it was for your own use. How was it setup at that point? a web app with a public url too or something else? if you don't mind sharing

dbreunig
I don't mind sharing at all.

The nuts and bolts weren't too different from what it is today: Rails app deployed on Render with simple auth. Most of the work getting it ready for public consumption was generalizing the UX so it wasn't so specific to my way of thinking, polishing the look and feel, speeding it up, improving the auth, and other things you wouldn't really need for a personal app.

mebazaa
That's cool! There's one other feature I would love to have that current to-do lists don't capture: follow-ups. Basically, for a task such as "email Mr. and Mrs. XYZ", have the ability to snooze the tasks for a few days, if they haven't responded. There are many tasks that aren't done just because you did your part of it...
_tk_
Great feature request!
cptskippy
This looks fantastic. I've been creating repeatable checklists for all sorts of things and the tools that are out there always fail in this regard.

My other gripe that no one has addressed yet is editing vs execution of a repeatable list.

* When I'm editing a grocery list I want the items in alphabetical order because I'm searching a preexisting list for items to add, but when I'm executing the list I want the items in the order I come upon them in the store.

* When I'm executing a list, usually on my phone, I don't want my fat fingers accidentally reordering/editing/deleting list items. The list should be read-only with the exception of marking items completed.

* Having a list with defaults and a reset option. I often have repeatable lists with optional and required items (e.g. beach vs desert camping, groceries, etc). It would be nice to have a reset option to uncheck/show defaults while keeping all the optional items off a list.

krawczstef
This is what I use google keep (https://keep.google.com/) for -- though it's not as fully featured as yours, but it is free. In your opinion, what would be the main feature over that you'd say?
dbreunig
I think the thing I appreciate most as a user is the UI for performing lists on mobile. Big font, focused on a step, fast, and easy commenting.
tennisflyi
I've noticed this gap too. Looking forward to trying it!

Edit: Would love to have the ability to have everything completely private. Also, a one-level deep grouping would be great!

kspacewalk2
Please consider being more explicit that this is a freemium product. You state it in the post, but pricing is nowhere to be seen on the index page. Until you sign up, I suppose. It's probably not done intentionally, but it's effectively one of those annoying sneaky anti-patterns.
dbreunig
Yes, better messaging about premium and what it enables is on my backlog. You can view details if you click the carot in the right-side of the menubar and click "Upgrade".

Ironically, the lack of prominence of pricing is due to me hating how often apps remind you you're not paying. I didn't want it to be in everyone's face, all the time. Probably bad UX and business on my end...will fix shortly.

kspacewalk2
One of those things that is hard to gauge until you bravely submit your creation to the criticism of the peanut gallery (happy to oblige!). It looks like a wonderful product, BTW.
defulmere
Love the logo, the reverse checkmark as a "step" is a great concept.
dbreunig
Amazing. I never noticed this.

I wasn't aware the checkmark was backwards until a beta user complained about it. I'm left handed and occasionally make my marks that way and had never considered there is a 'right' way.

The real reason it's reversed is because earlier logo iteration used it as the "L" in "StepList". I did away with that full logo, but kept the mark.

But from now on, I'm stealing your take!

milkers
Woow, awesome. I had the same idea several years ago and it is great that someone took a 'step' to execute it. I was thinking about parents assigning chores to their children in steps that they are not lost in the 'how' part. Congrats on the launch!
beklein
Really love your idea and the app, congratulations!

I will probably start referring to my longer checklists as "steplists" — what a great name!

I noticed that abandoned items in Focus Mode are not specially marked as abandoned in List Mode. I would expect these items to sync in both modes for this state. I also prefer a half-checked state for items in progress; it gives you some instant gratification for starting to work on the next item... but that's just personal preference.

slau
That’s a crazy large terms of service, considering the simplicity of the service.

Forced arbitration and everything. Banning anyone under 18.

Is this really necessary?

dbreunig
I'm using what's recommended by Stripe Atlas. If this finds traction and people seem to like it, I'll consider investing in a lawyer.
bcrosby95
Repeatable tasks are great for home maintenance, where you have a dozen or so things you should be doing monthly, yearly, etc.
dbreunig
Agree. My weekly Sunday Cleaning List is one of my most used.
willks
Congrats on the launch, this is really cool!
8organicbits
I don't think the GitHub integration had the right permissions. When I try it I see:

Repositories Public repositories

This application will be able to read and write all public repository data. This includes the following:

    Code
    Issues
    Pull requests
    Wikis
    Settings
    Webhooks and services
    Deploy keys
dbreunig
Thanks. Will take a look at that today.
8organicbits
The comment on goldilocks zone feels right. TODO list apps are workflow improvement tools and each workflow will have a different set of required features. One example that caused me to build a small app of my own[1] was handling of tasks due "today". I procrastinate chores and stay up late. Many TODO apps would mark everything overdue at midnight, which isn't when the "day ended" for me.

[1] https://alexsci.com/blog/personal-apps/

Brajeshwar
Honest thoughts -- but you seem to be competing with the likes of Todoist[1] which is $4/mo. And if one is on the macOS, iOS, iPadOS, the Reminder App has become pretty powerful. I use a combination of Notes, Reminder, and Plain-text (Markdown in Obsidian with an Outliner Plugin). Repeatable -- either show done items or make it a repeat reminder.

1. https://todoist.com/pricing

dbreunig
Thanks. If this finds traction, individual users won't be the revenue base. Want to keep individual users close to free and have small orgs pay for teams features.
travisjungroth
I wrote this comment a while back that you might already be well past, might find useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744259

I think a big product choice is if you expect the lists to be do-confirm vs read-do, two ways of using checklists.

I’ve found LLMs to be very good at making checklists for things I do I infrequently. Like, packing for a specific trip. I just have it go long and ignore what I don’t need. It often catches something I’d have forgotten. Maybe a feature of a checklist draft generator would be useful.