product
People who plan their days deliberately and want a calendar that gets out of the way. They are comfortable with keyboards and shortcuts, and reach for Compass to organize Month → Week → Day, then lock in on what matters now. Many start anonymously (events in browser IndexedDB) before signing in; some connect Google Calendar, but Google is always optional. The job: shape the day quickly, then focus on a single task without the surrounding noise of a full calendar suite.
Compass is a daily planner for minimalists: organize your day and lock in. It does a few calendar and task things well rather than everything passably. Core surfaces are the calendar grid (Month/Week/Day), the Planner Sidebar (navigation, account, Someday Events), the command palette, Day Mode (tasks and events side-by-side), and Now Mode (focus on one task). Success is a user planning their week in minutes and then spending the rest of the time heads-down, not managing the tool. It is bootstrapped and built for the long term, so restraint and durability beat feature accumulation.
Calm, focused, fast. The interface is quiet and stays out of the way; speed and focus are the qualities the user should feel. There is a personal, human thread too (the handwritten Custom Note, the "lock-in" framing) but it lives at the edges, never at the expense of calm. Voice is plain and direct, never salesy or buzzword-driven.
- Cluttered like Google/Outlook Calendar. No dense toolbars, nested menus, feature sprawl, or busy chrome. The whole point is what Compass leaves out.
- Generic shadcn look. Avoid the default-component-library aesthetic: neutral-gray cards, stock radii and shadows, the interchangeable look shared by countless shadcn starters. Compass has its own dark, blue-accented identity.
- Generic SaaS dashboard. No card grids, hero-metric templates, or gradient accents standing in for design.
- Playful / consumer-cute. No bubbly mascots, candy colors, or heavy illustration.
- Enterprise / corporate. No heavy, dense, navy-and-gray business-software weight.
- Restraint is the feature. Every element must earn its place; when in doubt, remove it. The product's value is what it omits.
- Plan fast, then disappear. Optimize for getting the day shaped in minutes and then receding so the user can focus. Chrome serves the work, not itself.
- Keyboard-first, not keyboard-only. Shortcuts and the command palette are primary paths; pointer interactions stay equally polished.
- Calm by default, focus on demand. The resting state is quiet; Now Mode is where intensity concentrates onto a single task.
- Own identity over defaults. Lean on Compass's dark, blue-accented voice rather than library defaults or category clichés.
Target WCAG AA: body text ≥4.5:1 contrast, large text ≥3:1, against the dark surfaces. Given the keyboard-first ethos, keep all primary flows fully keyboard-operable with visible focus states.