Mantle

Mantle is my personal operating system. Todos, a calendar planner, 1:1 notes, meeting notes, and spending, in one keyboard-first, mobile-first app. This page is the short guide: what each part is for, how to create things fast, and every shortcut worth knowing.

The whole thing is built around one habit: capture in one keystroke, decide later. You should never lose a thought because the right screen was three taps away.

The one key to learn first

⌘K (or Ctrl+K) opens the command palette from anywhere. It is capture, search, and event creation in one box. What you type decides what it does:

• Plain text creates a todo. review the Q3 budget and Enter.
• @name tags a person. When the name matches someone you know, Mantle asks what kind of note it is: feedback, win, action, fyi, or just a todo. So @bob missed standup twice lands on Bob, not in a pile.
• A scheduling phrase opens event mode. Start with e or use a verb like “schedule”, “book”, “meeting”. e lunch with john 1pm tomorrow 1h creates the event on Enter.
• /ctx logs a timeline note for the day. /ctx 2pm called the bank about the transfer.
• Anything else fuzzy-searches your modules, so ⌘K plan jumps to the Planner.

On mobile the same capture lives in the floating pill at the bottom of the screen.

Modules

The four daily drivers stay loaded once you have opened them, so switching between them is instant.

Two more load when you need them: People (contacts, 1:1 prep and history) and Finance (spending, budget, recurring payments). Jump to any of them by name from ⌘K.

Creating events

There are five ways in. Use whichever is closest to your hands.

1. Drag to paint (desktop). Press and drag down the timeline to mark a range. A small composer pops up on the block: type the title, @ to add attendees, Enter to create. ⌘↵ opens the full form instead. Esc cancels.
2. Tap a slot (mobile). One tap on an empty slot starts an event there.
3. At the cursor. Move the cursor with the arrow keys, then c or Enter.
4. From ⌘K. e meeting with sarah at 3pm friday 30m, Enter.
5. Natural language. The parser understands “meeting with john tomorrow at 3pm 1h”, “lunch monday 12-1”, “catch up with sarah fri 2pm”. It reads times like 3pm, 15:30, 1430, and durations like 45m, 1h, 1h30m.

The event form

Open the full form with ⌘↵ from the inline composer, or by opening an event and choosing to edit. It carries everything a Google event needs:

• All-day toggle, which hides the time pickers.
• Repeat: None, Daily, Weekly, Weekdays, or Monthly.
• Remind: a single offset like 10 minutes before.
• Calendar: type to search your calendars instead of scrolling a dropdown.
• Attendees: add by @ or email. When attendees are set, the planner shows free or busy at the proposed time and can suggest mutual openings.
• Google Meet, location, and description.

Planner shortcuts

The planner is built to run from the keyboard. Press ? inside it to see this list any time.

Move around

Act on the day

To reschedule, drag an event to a new time or day. If you own it you confirm the move. If you are a guest you propose the new time instead. For a repeating event you choose the scope: this one, this and future, or all.

Reading the calendar

A few controls in the planner header keep a busy day legible:

• Add a teammate to overlay their calendar in their own color. Overlapping events sit side by side, not stacked, so nothing hides behind anything else.
• Energy lens (the lightning icon) lays a faint heatmap of your typical energy over the day, from Garmin data. Drag an event into a low window and it warns you.
• Zoom stretches or compresses the hours so a packed afternoon has room to breathe.
• Calendars toggles which connected Google calendars are showing.

People and 1:1s

This is where capture pays off. Every @person note you jot lands on that person, typed as feedback, win, action, or fyi. Feedback and action notes also create a reminder to deliver them, so nothing waits in your head until the next meeting.

Before a 1:1, open the prep card from the dashboard radar. It assembles, in one view: your direction for them, undelivered feedback first, every note since you last met, the open todos that mention them, and a line for where you left off. You walk in warm instead of cold.

When you finish, log the 1:1. That marks the feedback delivered and resets the clock. What stays unresolved carries to next time.

Give each direct report a direction: two sentences on where you need them by the end of the quarter. It shows on their page and on the prep card.

Meeting notes

Open any event and write a note on it. The note is tied to that calendar event, so it is always where the meeting was. Events that carry a note show a small marker.

To find past notes, open the notes archive from the planner header. It lists every note newest first and is fuzzy-searchable by event title or content, so last month’s decision is a few keystrokes away.

Finance

Spending lands three ways: typed in by hand, pasted from a bank notification (the app reads the amount, date, and category out of the text), or pushed automatically from card alerts over WhatsApp. Everything sorts into a fixed set of categories.

The budget frame is fixed at 20 percent tithe, 20 percent savings, 60 percent living. The dashboard shows the month’s income, expenses, and the share of income spent, so the number is in front of you, not buried.

The short version

• ⌘K for anything: capture, jump, or schedule.
• Type a todo and press Enter. Tag a person with @ to make it a note instead.
• Drag the timeline to make an event. c at the cursor if your hands are on the keys.
• ? in the planner shows every shortcut.
• Notes live on the thing they belong to: feedback on the person, meeting notes on the event.

Capture first. Decide later. Keep your hands on the keys.