Taskholder Desktop

What it is

A desktop task manager for people who are holding several projects at the same time. Tasks belong to a project rather than to one undifferentiated list, so the question it answers is not “what do I have to do” but “what does this project still need”.

It ships as a real desktop application on macOS and Windows, with its own marketing site, passwordless and Google sign-in, gated downloads, and a purchase flow behind them.

Why this experiment

This one is the lab’s first graduate — the project that left the workshop and became a product. That transition is the experiment as much as the app is.

Building the thing was the smaller half. The larger half was everything that has to exist around it before a stranger can buy it: accounts, entitlements, a download that only works if you are allowed to have it, a payment webhook that can be replayed without charging anyone twice, and terms that say what they mean. Most prototypes never meet that surface. This one did, which is what makes it useful to the lab as a reference for everything that follows.

How it works

Electron on the desktop, Supabase behind it. Authentication is passwordless email plus Google, and entitlement — trial or purchased — is anchored on the server rather than trusted from the client, so the clock cannot be reset by reinstalling.

Downloads are gated on that entitlement, and the purchase flow settles through a verified, idempotent webhook: the same event arriving twice changes nothing the second time.

Taskholder carries its own identity, a coral accent, deliberately unlike this site. A graduate gets its own brand; it does not stay dressed as the lab.

Where it is now

Live. It is the one project on this list with a finished product behind it, which is why it is also the one that stops being interesting to the lab — the work moved on to what came after.