Build your own project manager with Claude

Every project tool I tried was built for a team of thirty. I'm a team of one.

So I'd sign up for the shiny one — Notion, Asana, Trello, whatever — spend a weekend colour-coding a board, and two weeks later I'd be spending more time feeding the board than doing the actual work. The tool became the job. That's backwards.

What finally worked was small and a little embarrassing: I built my own, in an afternoon, with Claude. No code, no subscription, no features I don't use. Just a tool shaped exactly like my week. Here's how to do the same.

1. Map how you actually work — before you touch Claude

Open a notebook, not an app. Write down how work really moves through your days, not how you think it's supposed to. A few honest questions:

• What do you actually track? Tasks, projects, "someday maybe," follow-ups — pick the two or three that matter and ignore the rest.
• What are your real stages? Most solo work is just idea → doing → done. You probably don't need seven columns.
• What do you check first thing in the morning? That's your home screen. Build for that one view.
• What do the big tools nag you about that you genuinely don't care about? Due dates on everything, story points, sub-tasks of sub-tasks. Leave all of it out.

Ten minutes of this and you'll have a one-page spec that's more useful than any template — because it's yours.

2. Describe it to Claude and let it build

Now you just talk. You don't write code — you describe what you wrote down, and Claude builds it. Two ways I've done it:

• A single-file tool. Ask Claude to build a self-contained web app — one HTML file, saves to your browser, no account. Something like: "Build me a minimal personal project tracker as a single HTML file. Columns: Ideas, Doing, Done. I can add cards, drag them between columns, and it saves in my browser. Keep it calm and clean — warm, dark, not busy." You'll get a working tool you can open from your desktop.
• A Claude Project that runs your week. Set up a Project with instructions describing how you like to work, then each morning paste in your tasks and let it plan the day, flag what's slipping, and cut what doesn't matter. Less an app, more a chief-of-staff.

Either way, the magic is that fixing it is a sentence away. "Make the Done column collapsible." "Add a Today view." "This feels cluttered — simplify it." Claude rewrites it on the spot.

3. Live in it for a week, then tweak

Don't polish it up front. Use the rough version for a week and pay attention to the friction — the little moment where you sigh and reach for something else. That sigh is your next prompt. Because you built it, you're never stuck with someone else's idea of how you should work; you just change it.

Mine still isn't pretty. It has exactly four things on it and nothing else. But I open it every morning, I actually use it, and I pay nothing for the privilege. That's the whole win: the tool serves the work, instead of the other way around.