Schedule Build Mode

Schedule build mode turns the Schedule list into a keyboard-first surface for laying down and structuring a project plan. It is on by default and is a desktop-only experience — mobile continues to use the existing Add Task modal.

The goal is to collapse the round-trip cost of structuring a plan from “open modal → fill form → save → repeat” to “type, Alt + →, type, Enter.”

What build mode is — and what it isn’t

Build mode is a schedule-construction tool. It is the fastest way to lay down and structure the work breakdown structure (WBS) of a project: type a task name, Alt + → to indent it under the row above (which becomes a phase), Space to mark it complete, F2 to edit it. Everything happens on the Schedule view, in the task list, with the keyboard. Plain Tab and Shift + Tab are left alone on a focused row — they fall through to the browser’s normal focus traversal, so keyboard users can always Tab out of the grid.

Build mode is not sprint planning. It does not create sprints, move cards, set velocity, or triage a backlog — that work lives on the Board, the Sprint planning surface, and the Product backlog. If you are an agile team deciding what goes in the next sprint, build mode is the wrong surface; if you are laying out the shape of the plan itself — phases, tasks, durations, and dependencies — build mode is exactly it.

Build mode is for…	…not for
Structuring the WBS: phases, tasks, indent / outdent	Deciding sprint scope or moving cards
Setting durations and % complete inline	Estimating story points (that’s estimation poker)
Wiring predecessor / successor dependencies	Board triage or backlog refinement
Keyboard-first plan entry on the Schedule view	Any mobile workflow — build mode is desktop-only

Learning the shortcuts

Build mode needs no setup — open any project’s Schedule view and it’s already there. Settings → Schedule has a View keyboard shortcuts link that opens the same cheatsheet you get by pressing ? on the Schedule view, so you can learn the hotkeys before you start.

What you see on the Schedule view

Two visible signals appear:

A ⌨ Build mode pill in the toolbar (left side, next to the +Task button). Clicking it opens the keyboard cheatsheet.
A bottom hint strip that always shows the three most relevant hotkeys for what you’re currently focused on. Pressing ? opens the full cheatsheet from anywhere on the page.

The Schedule list rows also gain new keyboard behavior — see below.

Keyboard reference

The Schedule list is in one of three focus states at any time. The same keys do different things in each — the hint strip and cheatsheet always show what’s active.

When nothing is selected (NoSelection)

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Move focus into the list
Click a row	Select that row
?	Show / hide the cheatsheet

When a row is focused (RowFocused)

Key	Action
Enter	Insert a new sibling row below (same level) and drop into its Name cell — the fast “type, Enter, type” flow
Shift + Enter	Insert a new sibling row above the focused row
⌘ Enter / Ctrl + Enter	Insert a new child row one level deeper — the focused row becomes a summary as a side effect of gaining a child
F2	Edit the focused cell (defaults to the Task name)
Letter key	Start typing — opens the Task name cell
Alt + →	Indent under the previous sibling row (forms an emergent phase)
Alt + ←	Outdent one level
↑ ↓	Move focus to the next / previous row
Shift + ↑ / ↓	Extend a contiguous selection from the focused row
⌘ A / Ctrl + A	Select every sibling of the focused row; press again to expand to the whole visible tree
Alt + ↑ / ↓	Move the row and its subtree among its same-indent siblings — no-op on a selection that spans more than one parent
⌘ V / Ctrl + V	Paste rows from a spreadsheet — see Paste rows from a spreadsheet below
⌘ Z / Ctrl + Z	Undo the most recent paste, while its receipt strip is still showing
F8	Jump to the next row that needs attention — an unresolved `@owner` mention, or a row a recent paste couldn’t infer a duration for
Shift + F8	Jump to the previous such row
F7	Jump to the next row that still needs dates — no committed start yet
Shift + F7	Jump to the previous such row
Alt + A	Toggle Author / Read mode for the whole Schedule (see below) — persists per project, per browser
Space	Mark the focused row complete / un-complete
⌘ D / Ctrl + D	Duplicate the row and its subtree, appended below with “(copy)” on the duplicated root only — internal dependencies inside the subtree are not cloned, matching single-row duplicate’s existing “dependencies are never cloned” rule. With a multi-row selection, duplicates every top-level selected row as its own subtree
Right-click	Open the row context menu (Edit / Indent / Outdent / Convert to milestone / Delete)
Delete / Backspace	Delete the focused row — or, with a multi-row selection active, every selected row (no confirm; undo via re-adding, or the delete toast’s Undo action)
Esc	Clear the current selection or row focus

A blank project is a canvas

A project with no tasks opens as a working surface, not an empty card:

The outline starts with a live row and the caret already in it. Type a name, press Enter, and it becomes a task — then the caret stays put so the next row is the next thing you type. Nothing is saved until there is a name to save, so opening a project and backing out leaves nothing behind.
The timeline draws a horizon against the project’s chosen calendar. An empty grid says “nothing is planned yet”; a blank panel would say “something is broken”.
A quiet side panel offers the other ways to fill it — import a file, and the project’s own stated facts (starts, calendar, default mode, views) so the ruler beside it is legible.

Rows without dates are legal

A row with no committed start is not an error. It renders with em-dashes and joins the needs dates count, which F7 / Shift + F7 walk. Getting the shape down first and dating it afterwards is a normal way to plan, so the outline never refuses a row for want of a date.

Schedule-wide shortcuts (always on)

Key	Action
⌘ M / Ctrl + M	Insert a new milestone at today’s date
?	Open the keyboard shortcut cheatsheet

When a cell is being edited (CellEdit)

Key	Action
Enter	In the Name cell: save, then open a new sibling row below ready to name (commit-and-continue — a blank name makes the next Enter a calm stop). Shift + Enter inserts the sibling above instead, and ⌘ / Ctrl + Enter inserts a child row — same three variants as Enter on a focused row. In the Duration / % cells: save and return focus to the row
Backspace, on an emptied Name cell	Deletes the row and lands the caret at the end of the previous row’s Name text — the outliner “backspace merges into the line above” convention
Esc	On a row you just created and never typed into: discards the row entirely, since there is nothing to revert to. On any other row: reverts to its last committed value and returns focus to the row
Tab	Save and move to the next editable cell in the same row
Shift + Tab	Save and move to the previous editable cell

The editable cells in v1 are Task name, Duration, and % complete. Start and Finish are computed from CPM and remain read-only — change a Planned Start to override.

Dependencies

Action	Result
Hover a row	Reveals its dependency chain — predecessors highlight blue, successors highlight green
Right-click	Opens the row menu, where Add predecessor / Add successor open a task picker

Inline authoring tokens

While you are naming a row, a handful of short tokens set the rest of the row without leaving the cell. Each one opens a picker, so nothing has to be memorized.

You type	What it does
`#5d` `#2w`	Duration — 5 days, 2 weeks. A bare `#3` is 3 days
`@ana` `@ana:50`	Owner, at 100% or at 50%
`>2.3` `>Survey`	Predecessor, by WBS path or by name
`>2.3+2d` `>2.3-1d`	…with 2 days of lag, or 1 day of lead
`>2.3:SS`	…as a Start-to-Start link (`FS`, `SS`, `FF`, `SF`)
`!` or `#0`	Milestone
`~sprint` `~gated` `~kanban`	Delivery mode for this row
`[Design]`	File the row under the “Design” phase
`/`	Command menu — every token and toolbar action, found by typing

So Wireframes #5d @ana >2.3 [Design] creates a 5-day task called “Wireframes”, assigns Ana, links it after task 2.3, and files it under the Design phase.

Everything a token does is also a toolbar button and a / menu entry. The syntax is a shortcut for people who want one — never the only way in.

Working with the pickers

Typing a token’s first character opens a type-ahead. It is deliberately non-modal:

Key	What it does
`↑` `↓`	Move through the suggestions
`⇥`	Accept the highlighted suggestion
`Esc`	Dismiss the picker — your text is left exactly as you typed it
`⌥` `→`	Cycle the dependency type of the link you are on: FS → SS → FF → SF

Typing past a picker is always allowed, and accepting a suggestion completes the token in place rather than saving the row — so you can keep going and add another token. Focus never leaves the row.

What happens to your text

A token that resolves disappears from the name. Draft the plan @ana saves a task called “Draft the plan” — the @ana was an instruction, not part of the title.

A token that doesn’t resolve stays put, and the row still saves. If @ana matches nobody on the roster — or matches two people ambiguously — the text stays in the name and is underlined in amber so you can see and fix it. The same goes for a phase name that doesn’t exist or a task you mistyped. Nothing is silently dropped and nothing is silently guessed at, and one bad token never costs you the rest of the row.

A token that loses a conflict is shown crossed out. Launch ! ~scrum is a milestone: a milestone is a zero-duration gate, so it cannot also be a scrum row. The row saves as a milestone and the ~scrum is echoed back struck through, so you can see that it did not take.

Scope of the pickers

The owner picker only ever offers people already on this project’s roster; it never reaches into the workspace-wide resource library, so a name typed here cannot bind work to someone outside the project. To add somebody new, add them to the roster first from Team → Roster. Predecessor and phase pickers are scoped to this project the same way.

Adding an owner this way never removes anyone else already assigned to the row — @ana means “Ana owns this”, not “Ana is now the only person here”. Remove an assignment from the task drawer’s Assignees editor.

Paste rows from a spreadsheet

With a row focused, ⌘ V (Ctrl + V) pastes multiple rows copied from a spreadsheet straight into the outline — the fastest way to bring an existing plan in without 200 trips through the Add Task modal.

Hierarchy comes from leading indentation. A cell indented under the row above it — by leading spaces or a leading tab, however your spreadsheet expressed it — becomes that row’s child. A block copied straight out of Excel, Google Sheets, or a plain indented outline all read the same way; TruePPM does not care which application produced the leading whitespace.

Columns are guessed, not required to match exactly. A header row (a first row reading something like Task, Duration, Owner) is detected automatically and used to map columns; without one, the first column is assumed to be the task name and any column that looks like a set of durations is mapped by shape. Anything TruePPM can’t place is left out — never silently guessed at.

A receipt strip confirms what happened, right where you pasted: how many rows landed, how many hierarchy levels were read from indentation, which columns matched, how many were ignored, and how many rows have no duration yet (legal — TruePPM defaults an unset duration to 1 day, and you review them at your own pace). It stays on screen until you act on it:

Action	What it does
`⌘ Z` / Undo	Removes the whole paste as one step, keeping any row you’ve already edited since
Keep	Dismisses the strip; the rows stay
Map columns…	Corrects a wrong column guess and re-applies the paste under the new mapping
`F8`	Walks to the next row the paste couldn’t infer a duration for

Rows without a resolved duration are never treated as failures — they commit like every other pasted row, and F8 is how you find and fix them afterward, on your schedule, not the paste’s.

A pasted block always lands as siblings of whichever row was focused when you pasted — the same “same level as the focused row” placement Enter uses — so pasting while sitting inside a phase adds to that phase, and pasting with nothing focused lands at the project root.

Indenting and emergent phases

When you indent a row under a leaf row (one with no children), the parent automatically becomes a summary task — its name goes bold, computed dates roll up from its children, and the chevron lets you collapse / expand. There is no “convert this to a phase” step; phases form as a side effect of structuring.

The reverse holds when you outdent: if a summary task loses all its children, it becomes a leaf again on the next refresh.

Author / Read mode

Alt + A toggles the whole Schedule between Author (the default — every build-mode key works normally) and Read. Read mode is a personal “look, don’t touch” setting: it forces the view read-only regardless of your project role, so you can review a plan without risking an accidental edit. It is not a permission change — the server’s role-based access control is untouched, and it never restricts anyone else. The choice persists per project, per browser, and a toolbar pill always shows which mode is active so it is never silently on.

Selecting and acting on multiple rows

Shift + ↑ / Shift + ↓ extends a contiguous selection from whichever row you started on. ⌘ A (Ctrl + A) selects every sibling of the focused row on the first press, and expands to the entire visible tree on a second press while that exact sibling set is still selected. With a selection active, the structural keys act on every selected row instead of just the one you started on: Alt + → / ← indents or outdents the whole selection, Delete / Backspace removes every selected row, and ⌘ D duplicates each top-level selected row (and its subtree) as its own copy. Alt + ↑ / ↓ moves a selection only when it is a contiguous run of rows that share the same parent — a scattered or cross-level selection has no single well-defined destination, so the key is a no-op there rather than guessing. Any plain arrow-key move or a click collapses the selection back to a single row.

Edit many rows at once

⌘ ⇧ K (Ctrl + Shift + K) opens a sheet that applies one change to every selected row at once. With no selection, it acts on the focused row alone — the same rule Delete uses.

It acts on exactly the rows you selected, and never their children. To change a whole subtree including descendants, use ⌘ ⇧ M instead — the two shortcuts differ in scope, not in what they can set.

Every field starts on Leave unchanged, so a field you don’t touch is never written. Where the selected rows disagree, the option reads “Leave — Mixed” rather than showing a single value the selection doesn’t actually have.

Field	What it does
Add owner	Assigns a person from the project roster, with an allocation percent
Governed by / Progress from	The two classification axes — the same pair `⌘ ⇧ M` sets, applied to just these rows
Planned start / Planned finish	Set a committed date, or clear one

Adding an owner adds a co-owner — it never replaces one. A row that already has somebody keeps them and gains the person you picked. Removing an assignment stays on the row itself, in the task drawer’s Assignees editor. Summary rows cannot take an owner at all; the sheet says how many of your selected rows that affects before you apply, and their other changes still land.

Rows are applied independently, and the sheet reports what happened. If you can’t edit some of the selection, the rest still goes through — you get “12 of 15 rows updated” plus the reason the others didn’t, and Review the 3 turns exactly those rows into your new selection so you can deal with them without hunting for them in a long outline.

Setting a planned start applies it as a no-earlier-than constraint to every selected row, not as a literal identical start date — the schedule engine still decides when each row actually starts. See How dates work.

Accessibility

The Schedule task list is a real treegrid: each row carries a genuine aria-level (its WBS depth), aria-expanded on rows that have children (never on a leaf row, so assistive technology never sees a phantom disclosure control), and aria-selected that now covers a multi-row selection, not just the single focused row.

The canvas Timeline has its own accessible overlay, invisibly layered over the bars: role="listbox" with one role="option" per task bar, each with its own descriptive label — the task’s name, duration, start/finish dates, and critical-path status, plus its delivery mode when the task has one (“Design review, 3 days, starts Aug 4, finishes Aug 6, Scrum delivery”). Every bar is independently reachable and readable by a screen reader; nothing on the Timeline is a decorative image.

A task’s delivery mode (Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban) is never shown by color alone on the Gantt bars. Each mode gets a left-edge gutter accent, a low-contrast texture across the bar body (diagonal stripes for Scrum, a dot grid for Kanban — Waterfall, the default, gets neither), and a letter prefixed onto the existing progress chip (“S 40%”). Under a forced-colors / high-contrast theme, the texture pattern is what survives — color is never the only signal.

What’s not in v1

No mobile signal. Build mode is desktop-only. On mobile, use the Add Task button as before.
Enter’s positional insert is one-directional. Plain Enter appends the new row at the end of its parent’s children rather than immediately after the focused row. Shift + Enter (insert above) does land exactly where you’d expect — it composes the create with a reorder — but the common “type, Enter, type” flow still appends.
No optimistic indent. Indent / outdent waits ~50ms for the server to confirm before the row position updates.
No fill-down. Multi-row select and duplicate exist, and 0.4 adds paste-many from a spreadsheet; a fill-down / fill-series gesture for extending a value down a column does not exist yet.
No multi-step undo (yet), and no Enter-to-create on the Timeline. A paste, a classification cascade, and a spreadsheet import each undo as one step — see Paste rows from a spreadsheet above, Classify a subtree, and CSV/Excel import. What’s still missing: a stack of undoable steps (only the most recent action of each kind is reversible), and creating rows from the Timeline the way Enter does on the list — tracked separately, not in this release.
A bulk edit is not undoable with ⌘ Z. The bulk-edit sheet ships in 0.4, but unlike a paste or a cascade it records no undo step — re-open the sheet and set the field back. Take particular care with Add owner, which the sheet cannot reverse at all: remove the assignment from the row’s own Assignees editor.
The bulk-edit sheet cannot move rows under a phase, or set a calendar. Phase changes go one row at a time (drag, Alt + →, or the [Phase name] inline token); the working calendar is a project-level setting, not a per-task one, and lives in Project settings → Schedule. Shifting a selection’s dates by a relative amount (“everything slips a week”) is likewise not available — the sheet sets absolute dates only.
No Sprint backlog parity yet. The same inline-edit / Tab pattern will extend to the Sprint backlog table in a future release.