Workflow is a single HTML file that runs in any browser. No account. No subscription. No server. Everything you put into it stays on your machine, in your browser's local storage, until you decide to move or clear it. This manual walks through every feature so you can get to work without guessing.
Download workflow-planner.html and save it somewhere you'll remember. Your Desktop works fine. A dedicated folder called "Workflow" in your Documents folder works better, especially if you plan to keep backup JSON files alongside it.
Open the file in any modern browser. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge all work. The file does not need an internet connection to run. The Google Fonts it uses load from the web the first time you open it; after that, your browser caches them and the typography stays correct even offline.
The page opens to the current week. Seven columns, one per day, with Monday at the left and Sunday at the right. Today's column has an amber border so you always know where you are. The columns are empty until you add items.
Above the calendar you'll see the summary bar with six zeros. Those counts update every time you add, edit, archive, or delete something.
Bookmark the file in your browser. On Mac you can also add it to your Dock as a web app shortcut. On Windows, right-click the browser tab and choose "Pin tab" to keep it accessible.
There is no account to create, no login, and no settings to configure before you can start. Open the file and add your first item. The tool saves everything automatically to your browser's local storage as you work.
The top of the page shows the tool name, today's full date, and the date range of whatever view is currently active. On the right side you'll find four controls: the Week/Month toggle, the Print button, the Drive button, and the Help button.
Directly below the header sits a row of six live counts. They update every time anything changes.
| Counter | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Active Items | Every item currently in your planner that has not been archived or deleted. |
| Due This Week | Items whose finish date falls within the next 7 days from today. |
| Awaiting Assets | Items with the Awaiting Assets checkbox checked. These are things you cannot move forward on until something arrives from a client or collaborator. |
| In Draft | Items with their status set to Draft. |
| Completed / Done | Items with their status set to Published / Done. These stay in the active view until you archive them. |
| Recurring Items | Base items set to repeat weekly, biweekly, or monthly. |
The Awaiting Assets count is useful to check at the start of a work session. If that number is higher than zero, those items need a follow-up before they can move.
The two-button toggle in the top right switches between views. Workflow remembers which view you were using and opens to it the next time you load the file.
Workflow has five categories. Every item you create can belong to one or more of them. Categories are color coded throughout both views so you can read the calendar at a glance.
| Category | Intended use |
|---|---|
| Personal Projects | Work that is yours alone. Personal shoots, writing projects, course development, business planning. |
| Creative / Portfolio | Work aimed at building or updating your portfolio. Self-assigned shoots, spec work, image series you're developing. |
| Client Outreach | Any contact with existing or prospective clients. Follow-ups, proposals, check-ins, cold outreach. |
| Social Media | Posts, content planning, scheduling, and platform-specific work. |
| Publishing | Newsletter issues, blog posts, articles, Substack drafts, and any written work going out publicly. |
All five categories are active by default. Each category has a pill button in the filter bar. Click any pill to toggle that category off. The calendar updates immediately and hides everything in that category. Click the pill again to bring it back.
This is useful when you want to focus. If you're planning client outreach for the week, turn everything else off. The calendar shows only outreach items and you can see gaps, clusters, and timing without visual noise from the other four categories.
An item can belong to multiple categories. A newsletter issue that involves client work might be tagged as both Publishing and Client Outreach. It will show up in the calendar when either category is active, and it takes the color of the first category assigned.
Workflow saves your current filter state. If you close the browser with Social Media turned off, it will still be off when you reopen the file.
To edit an existing item, click it anywhere it appears on the calendar.
The modal is a form with all of the fields for a single item. Here is what each field does.
| Field | What to put here |
|---|---|
| Title | Required. The name that shows on the calendar. Keep it short enough to read in a day column. 25 characters or fewer displays cleanly; longer titles truncate with an ellipsis. |
| Categories | Select one or more. Click a category pill to toggle it on or off. At least one category is recommended so the item has a color on the calendar. |
| Status | Draft, Scheduled, In Progress, or Published / Done. Use this to track where an item is in its lifecycle. The summary bar counts Drafts and Done items separately. |
| Platform / Channel | Free text. For Publishing items: Substack, blog, LinkedIn article, etc. For Social Media items: Instagram, LinkedIn, X, etc. Leave blank if it doesn't apply. |
| Client Name | Free text. For client outreach or client-driven work. Leave blank for personal work. |
| Contact Email | The client or contact's email address. Included in the Copy All output so you can paste it directly into an email client. |
| Start Date | When work on this item begins. Combined with the finish date, this determines which calendar days the item appears on. An item with a start of Monday and a finish of Friday shows on all five days. |
| Finish Date | The deadline or target completion date. Items with a finish date within 7 days of today get a yellow alert treatment. The summary bar's "Due This Week" count reads from this field. |
| Repeat | Does not repeat, Weekly, Every 2 Weeks, or Monthly. See Section 5 for how recurrence works. |
| Repeat Until | Only appears when a repeat interval is selected. Sets the last date on which the item will recur. Without this, recurrence runs forward indefinitely. |
| Awaiting Assets | A checkbox. Check it when forward progress depends on receiving something from someone else. Photos from a client, copy from a writer, approval from an art director. The summary bar counts these so you can see blocked items at a glance. |
| Notes | Free text, multi-line. Links, instructions, context, whatever the item needs. This is the place for everything that doesn't fit in a structured field. |
Click Save in the bottom right of the modal. The calendar updates immediately and the summary bar counts adjust. There is no auto-save while you type in the modal; the item saves when you click Save or press Enter inside a text field followed by Save.
If you close the modal with the X button or press Escape before saving, your changes are discarded. Workflow does not ask for confirmation when you close without saving.
Some work happens on a fixed schedule. A weekly newsletter. A biweekly client check-in call. A monthly portfolio review. For these, set a recurrence so the item appears automatically across the calendar without creating it by hand each time.
In the item modal, open the Repeat dropdown and choose an interval: Weekly, Every 2 Weeks, or Monthly. A second field appears: Repeat Until. Set a date to cap the recurrence. If you leave Repeat Until blank, the item recurs forward as far as the calendar displays.
Workflow calculates the recurrence when it draws the calendar. Starting from the item's original start date, it creates instances at the chosen interval and places them on the correct days. Each instance shows a small ↻ badge so you can tell at a glance that it's part of a repeating series.
The recurring item count in the summary bar shows how many base items are set to repeat. It counts the base items, not the total number of instances across the calendar.
Click any instance of a recurring item on the calendar and you'll open the base item for editing. Changes you make apply to the entire series going forward. There is no option to edit a single instance within a series.
If a recurring item has an end date set, Workflow uses that date to determine the duration of each instance. An item starting Monday with a Friday end date recurs as a full work-week block each cycle. If no end date is set, each instance appears as a single day.
Open the item and change the Repeat field back to "Does not repeat." Save. The item reverts to its original start and end dates and stops appearing as a series.
To end a series at a specific point rather than stopping it entirely, set or update the Repeat Until date. The item continues recurring up to that date and stops after.
Week view is the default. Seven columns span Monday through Sunday, and each column shows the items active on that day. Today's column has an amber border.
Below the filter bar, a row of navigation controls lets you move through time. The left arrow steps back one week. The right arrow steps forward. The label between them shows the current week's date range. The Today button returns to the current week from wherever you are.
There is no limit on how far forward or backward you can navigate. If you want to plan three months out, step forward and add items to those weeks. They'll be there when those weeks arrive.
Each item in a day column shows its title (truncated to 25 characters if needed) and its status below. Items with a finish date within 7 days get a yellow outline and the status line reads "Due soon."
Items that span multiple days appear in every column between their start and finish dates. A shoot scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday shows in all three columns.
Click the + Add button at the bottom of any day column. The item modal opens with that day's date pre-filled in the Start Date field. This is faster than using the main Add Item button and then setting the date manually.
Click any item card in any column to open that item for editing. This is the same modal as the one used to create items. All fields are editable.
Switch to month view with the toggle in the top right. The calendar shows five weeks of dates in a standard grid, Monday through Sunday across each row. The view starts from the Monday of the week containing the first day of the displayed month.
The same navigation row used in week view switches to month controls when you're in month view. Left and right arrows step one month at a time. The Today button returns to the current month.
Each date cell shows the day number and up to several item chips, each color-coded to its primary category. Titles truncate to roughly 20 characters to fit the cell. Recurring items show the ↻ symbol.
Cells from the previous or next month that appear at the edges of the grid to complete the five-week display are dimmed slightly so you can distinguish them from the current month's dates.
Click any item chip to open that item for editing. Click anywhere else in a date cell to open a new item modal with that date pre-filled as the start date.
Month view is good for spotting clusters and gaps. If three weeks of Wednesdays are empty under Publishing, that's visible at a glance. Week view is better for working through what's actually due right now.
Any item with a finish date within 7 days of today is flagged as urgent. Workflow signals this in two ways.
A yellow banner appears at the top of the calendar, below the filter bar. It lists every urgent item as a color-coded chip with the item title and days remaining. Items due today show "(today!)" instead of a day count. Click any chip in the banner to open that item for editing.
The banner only appears when there are urgent items. If nothing is due within 7 days, it stays hidden.
Urgent items get a yellow outline in both week view and month view. The status line on week-view item cards changes to yellow and reads "Due soon" rather than the item's status.
The 7-day window gives you enough lead time to act. An item that appears in the urgent banner on Monday with 5 days remaining can still be completed, rescheduled, or followed up on before Friday. Items that sit in the urgent banner for several days without movement are a reliable signal that something needs a decision.
Urgent flagging is based on the finish date, not the start date. An item with a start date last week and a finish date tomorrow will appear in the urgent banner. An item with no finish date set will never appear there, regardless of when it started.
When work is done or no longer active, you have two options: archive or delete. They are different and the difference matters.
Archiving moves an item out of the active calendar and into a separate archive list. The item is gone from the calendar and no longer counted in the summary bar, but it is not erased. You can look at it, restore it to active, or delete it from there permanently.
Archive items you've completed or paused. They serve as a record of work done.
Deleting an item removes it permanently. There is no undo. Workflow asks for confirmation before deleting, but once you confirm, the item is gone.
Delete items that were created by mistake, entered as duplicates, or are genuinely irrelevant.
Open any item by clicking it on the calendar. In the bottom left of the modal you'll see two buttons: Archive and Delete. Both ask for confirmation before acting.
At the bottom of the main page, below the calendar, there is a Show Archive button. Click it to expand the archive list. Archived items appear in reverse order, newest first, with their categories and archive date shown.
Each archived item has two buttons: Restore and Delete.
The archive header also has a Clear All button that permanently deletes every archived item at once. This is not reversible.
Archiving a recurring item archives the base item and removes all of its instances from the calendar. Restoring it brings the recurrence back.
Inside any item's modal, the Copy All button in the bottom right copies every field of that item to your clipboard as plain text. The button label briefly changes to "Copied!" to confirm.
The output is a plain-text block formatted for easy reading and pasting. It includes every field that has content:
Paste it into an email to a client as a summary of the project scope. Drop it into a Slack message. Paste it into a note-taking app. Copy it into a document. The output is clean enough to send directly without cleanup.
If you have a client's email in the Contact Email field, paste the full block into your email client and their address is right there to copy into the To field.
Click Print in the top bar. Your browser's print dialog opens.
The calendar renders cleanly on white with black text. All of the UI elements that don't belong in a printed document are hidden: the filter bar, navigation arrows, summary bar, archive section, footer, and all buttons. What remains is the calendar grid with your items and a small header identifying the document as Workflow with your name and the print date.
In the print dialog, change the destination from a physical printer to Save as PDF. The exact wording depends on your browser and operating system, but the option is there in every major browser. This gives you a PDF you can file, share, or attach to a client email.
The print output reflects whichever view is currently active. Switch to month view before printing if you want the full calendar grid. Stay in week view for a focused one-week snapshot.
Before printing, use the category filter to narrow what shows on the calendar. If you want a PDF showing only your publishing schedule, turn off the other four categories, then print. Only Publishing items will appear.
In the print dialog, set margins to Minimum or None for the cleanest output. Check the "Background graphics" option if your browser offers it, though the print view is designed to look correct in black and white without backgrounds.
Workflow stores all your data in your browser's local storage. This is a built-in browser feature that saves data on your machine, tied to the specific browser you're using. It is not a cloud service. Nothing leaves your computer unless you export it.
Local storage persists between sessions. Close the browser, restart your computer, reopen the file: your data is still there. It survives browser restarts but can be cleared if you clear your browser's browsing data. If you clear cookies and site data in your browser settings, Workflow's storage goes with it.
Click the Drive button in the top bar to open the backup modal. It has two options: Export and Import.
Click Export Data as JSON. Your browser downloads a file named workflow-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json with today's date in the filename. This file contains all of your items and archived items in a format that Workflow can read back.
Save this file somewhere safe. A folder called "Workflow Backups" in your Documents folder, or a folder in Google Drive or Dropbox, works well. If you export regularly, date-stamped files let you go back to a specific point in time.
Click Import from JSON File. Your browser's file picker opens. Select a previously exported backup file. Workflow reads the file and asks for confirmation before replacing your current data.
Importing a backup replaces all current items and archived items with the contents of the backup file. There is no merge. If you have items in the current session that are not in the backup file, they will be overwritten. Export your current data before importing if you are not certain you want to replace it.
Export a backup from your old machine. Copy the JSON file and the workflow-planner.html file to the new machine. Open the HTML file in a browser, click Drive, click Import, and select the JSON file. Your data transfers completely.
Local storage is browser-specific. Data in Chrome does not automatically appear in Firefox. If you want the same data in both browsers, export from one and import into the other.
Export once a week at minimum. More often if you're adding a lot of items. The backup takes three seconds. Losing a week of planning entries because of a browser reset takes considerably longer to rebuild.
Two keyboard shortcuts are available. Both work from anywhere on the page when you are not typing inside a text field.
The N shortcut does not fire when your cursor is inside a text input, textarea, or dropdown. This prevents it from interfering with typing.
Renaming the HTML file does not affect anything. The file's internal function is independent of what you call it. Name it whatever makes sense for how you work.
If you clear your browser's cookies, cache, or site data, Workflow's local storage will be erased. Your items, archived items, and filter preferences will be gone. Export a backup before clearing browser data if Workflow has anything in it you want to keep.
After the Google Fonts load once and get cached, Workflow runs with no internet connection. The calendar, all item management, and local storage all work offline. The only thing that requires a connection is loading the fonts for the first time.
Workflow is a single-user tool. If two people open the same HTML file on the same machine in the same browser, they share the same local storage and the same data. If you want separate planning environments, each person should use a different browser profile, which gives each profile its own local storage.
If an updated version of Workflow is released, it will be a new HTML file. You'll need to export your data from the current file, replace the old file with the new one, and import your backup. Your data format is compatible between versions.
Browser local storage has a 5MB cap per domain. In practical terms this means Workflow can hold thousands of items before approaching the limit. You are unlikely to hit it through normal use.
If you notice the page loading slowly or items not saving, export a backup and check whether archiving or deleting old completed items helps. Keeping the active item count reasonable makes the calendar easier to read anyway.