Productivity · Weekend build
Build your own Linear
A sharp issue tracker for the way your team already works. Linear charges $10–$16 per person per month — that’s $120–$192 a year per person — for something you can replace with focused software of your own. Here is the honest scope, the honest timeline, and the exact prompt to hand your coding agent.
Who this replacement is for
This build targets one product team shipping software in weekly cycles. The goal: capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. If you need more than that, keep paying — the point of building it yourself is owning a tool shaped exactly like your workflow, not re-implementing a venture-funded roadmap.
Same build, different logo: this v1 also replaces Jira and Shortcut — they all solve the same core job.
How long it actually takes
One number would be a lie, so here are three. Each tier is a real, usable product — pick the one that matches how much of Linear you actually use.
| Estimate | What you get |
|---|---|
| 12 hours | issues, statuses, backlog view |
| 4 days | cycles, command menu, throughput chart, github links |
| 3 months+ | offline sync engine, real-time everything, roadmaps — the part you should probably skip |
What a minimal Linear alternative needs
- fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee
- backlog, active cycle, and completed views
- keyboard-first navigation and command menu
- issue comments, status history, and related links
- cycle progress and a simple throughput chart
Data model
Team, Issue, Cycle, Label, Comment
Integrations
GitHub issue or pull-request links
Capability context
Astro, HTMX, D1
The guardrail
Use durable unique identifiers and log every state transition.
Deliberate non-goals
Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
The complete build prompt
Copy this into your coding agent of choice. It is scoped for a useful v1 — journeys, screens, business rules, data model, security, tests, and acceptance scenarios included. Pick your stack:
You are building a production-ready software product named “Straightline”, a deliberately focused alternative to Linear. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: one product team shipping software in weekly cycles. Primary outcome: capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Linear. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. A teammate opens the command menu, creates an issue with title, description, priority, label, and assignee, then leaves it in the ordered backlog. 2. During cycle planning, the team moves selected backlog issues into the next weekly cycle, reorders priorities, starts the cycle, and tracks progress by status. 3. An engineer opens an assigned issue, links a GitHub pull request, comments on the outcome, advances it through the fixed workflow, and completes it. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Issue workspace: backlog, active cycle, and completed views with status, priority, label, assignee, keyword filters, quick create, and keyboard navigation. 2. Issue detail: durable issue identifier, editable fields, markdown description, comments, related GitHub links, status history, cycle assignment, and copy-link action. 3. Cycle planning: current and upcoming cycle dates, ordered candidate backlog, workload by assignee, issue selection, start-cycle action, and incomplete-issue rollover preview. 4. Cycle report: completed versus remaining counts, scope added and removed, throughput by recent cycle, completion trend, and links to contributing issues. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee 2. backlog, active cycle, and completed views 3. keyboard-first navigation and command menu 4. issue comments, status history, and related links 5. cycle progress and a simple throughput chart DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Assign each issue an immutable team-scoped identifier and never reuse it after archive or deletion; links must resolve independently of title changes. 2. Use one fixed status workflow in v1 and record every status, priority, assignee, and cycle transition as an immutable event. 3. Allow only one active cycle for the team; cycle dates use the team timezone and rollover requires an explicit destination for incomplete issues. 4. Accept only validated GitHub issue or pull-request URLs, store them as related links, and do not imply synchronization with GitHub state. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Team, Issue, Cycle, Label, Comment. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Astro pages and ordinary HTML forms. Use HTMX for form submissions, partial navigation, and server-driven updates, then Alpine.js only for small local browser state. The core workflow must remain understandable if either enhancement layer fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with the AHA stack: Astro for routing, layouts, and server-rendered pages; HTMX for interactions that benefit from HTML fragment responses; and Alpine.js for small, local interface state. Prefer Cloudflare D1 for relational persistence, R2 for object storage, Workers for server endpoints and scheduled work, Durable Objects only for coordinated real-time state, and Workflows or Queues for durable background jobs—but only when the product requirements call for them. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, HTMX, D1 as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with GitHub issue or pull-request links. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Use durable unique identifiers and log every state transition. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a teammate anywhere in the app, when they invoke quick create and submit a title, a uniquely identified backlog issue is created and focused. 2. Given two users editing an issue from the same version, when both save, the stale save shows a conflict instead of overwriting the newer transition. 3. Given an active cycle ending with incomplete issues, when the owner closes it, completed work remains reported and each incomplete issue moves only to the confirmed destination. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Straightline”, a deliberately focused alternative to Linear. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: one product team shipping software in weekly cycles. Primary outcome: capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Linear. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. A teammate opens the command menu, creates an issue with title, description, priority, label, and assignee, then leaves it in the ordered backlog. 2. During cycle planning, the team moves selected backlog issues into the next weekly cycle, reorders priorities, starts the cycle, and tracks progress by status. 3. An engineer opens an assigned issue, links a GitHub pull request, comments on the outcome, advances it through the fixed workflow, and completes it. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Issue workspace: backlog, active cycle, and completed views with status, priority, label, assignee, keyword filters, quick create, and keyboard navigation. 2. Issue detail: durable issue identifier, editable fields, markdown description, comments, related GitHub links, status history, cycle assignment, and copy-link action. 3. Cycle planning: current and upcoming cycle dates, ordered candidate backlog, workload by assignee, issue selection, start-cycle action, and incomplete-issue rollover preview. 4. Cycle report: completed versus remaining counts, scope added and removed, throughput by recent cycle, completion trend, and links to contributing issues. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee 2. backlog, active cycle, and completed views 3. keyboard-first navigation and command menu 4. issue comments, status history, and related links 5. cycle progress and a simple throughput chart DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Assign each issue an immutable team-scoped identifier and never reuse it after archive or deletion; links must resolve independently of title changes. 2. Use one fixed status workflow in v1 and record every status, priority, assignee, and cycle transition as an immutable event. 3. Allow only one active cycle for the team; cycle dates use the team timezone and rollover requires an explicit destination for incomplete issues. 4. Accept only validated GitHub issue or pull-request URLs, store them as related links, and do not imply synchronization with GitHub state. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Team, Issue, Cycle, Label, Comment. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Render with React Server Components by default. Use Server Actions for authenticated form mutations and add Client Components only for interactions that genuinely require browser state, browser APIs, drag-and-drop, or live updates. The core workflow must remain understandable before client-side JavaScript finishes loading. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Next.js, the App Router, and TypeScript. Use Server Components by default, Server Actions for authenticated mutations, and Route Handlers for public APIs, OAuth callbacks, webhooks, feeds, uploads, and downloads. Use PostgreSQL through Drizzle ORM with versioned migrations and an isolated test database. Access S3-compatible object storage through a server-only adapter, and run slow or retryable work in a real job or workflow system instead of the request lifecycle. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, HTMX, D1 as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with GitHub issue or pull-request links. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Use durable unique identifiers and log every state transition. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a teammate anywhere in the app, when they invoke quick create and submit a title, a uniquely identified backlog issue is created and focused. 2. Given two users editing an issue from the same version, when both save, the stale save shows a conflict instead of overwriting the newer transition. 3. Given an active cycle ending with incomplete issues, when the owner closes it, completed work remains reported and each incomplete issue moves only to the confirmed destination. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Straightline”, a deliberately focused alternative to Linear. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: one product team shipping software in weekly cycles. Primary outcome: capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Linear. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. A teammate opens the command menu, creates an issue with title, description, priority, label, and assignee, then leaves it in the ordered backlog. 2. During cycle planning, the team moves selected backlog issues into the next weekly cycle, reorders priorities, starts the cycle, and tracks progress by status. 3. An engineer opens an assigned issue, links a GitHub pull request, comments on the outcome, advances it through the fixed workflow, and completes it. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Issue workspace: backlog, active cycle, and completed views with status, priority, label, assignee, keyword filters, quick create, and keyboard navigation. 2. Issue detail: durable issue identifier, editable fields, markdown description, comments, related GitHub links, status history, cycle assignment, and copy-link action. 3. Cycle planning: current and upcoming cycle dates, ordered candidate backlog, workload by assignee, issue selection, start-cycle action, and incomplete-issue rollover preview. 4. Cycle report: completed versus remaining counts, scope added and removed, throughput by recent cycle, completion trend, and links to contributing issues. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee 2. backlog, active cycle, and completed views 3. keyboard-first navigation and command menu 4. issue comments, status history, and related links 5. cycle progress and a simple throughput chart DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Assign each issue an immutable team-scoped identifier and never reuse it after archive or deletion; links must resolve independently of title changes. 2. Use one fixed status workflow in v1 and record every status, priority, assignee, and cycle transition as an immutable event. 3. Allow only one active cycle for the team; cycle dates use the team timezone and rollover requires an explicit destination for incomplete issues. 4. Accept only validated GitHub issue or pull-request URLs, store them as related links, and do not imply synchronization with GitHub state. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Team, Issue, Cycle, Label, Comment. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Blade views and ordinary forms. Use Livewire for focused server-driven interactions and Alpine.js only for small local interface state. The core workflow must remain understandable without relying on a client-side application shell. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Laravel, PHP, Blade, Livewire, and Alpine.js. Use controllers and Blade forms for durable navigation, Livewire for focused interactions, Form Requests for validation, Policies and Gates for authorization, and small application actions or services for domain transitions. Use Eloquent with migrations, database constraints, and transactions; Laravel Storage for private S3-compatible files; queued Jobs for retryable work; the Scheduler for recurring work; and Notifications or Mail for email. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, HTMX, D1 as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with GitHub issue or pull-request links. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Use durable unique identifiers and log every state transition. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a teammate anywhere in the app, when they invoke quick create and submit a title, a uniquely identified backlog issue is created and focused. 2. Given two users editing an issue from the same version, when both save, the stale save shows a conflict instead of overwriting the newer transition. 3. Given an active cycle ending with incomplete issues, when the owner closes it, completed work remains reported and each incomplete issue moves only to the confirmed destination. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Straightline”, a deliberately focused alternative to Linear. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: one product team shipping software in weekly cycles. Primary outcome: capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Linear. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. A teammate opens the command menu, creates an issue with title, description, priority, label, and assignee, then leaves it in the ordered backlog. 2. During cycle planning, the team moves selected backlog issues into the next weekly cycle, reorders priorities, starts the cycle, and tracks progress by status. 3. An engineer opens an assigned issue, links a GitHub pull request, comments on the outcome, advances it through the fixed workflow, and completes it. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Issue workspace: backlog, active cycle, and completed views with status, priority, label, assignee, keyword filters, quick create, and keyboard navigation. 2. Issue detail: durable issue identifier, editable fields, markdown description, comments, related GitHub links, status history, cycle assignment, and copy-link action. 3. Cycle planning: current and upcoming cycle dates, ordered candidate backlog, workload by assignee, issue selection, start-cycle action, and incomplete-issue rollover preview. 4. Cycle report: completed versus remaining counts, scope added and removed, throughput by recent cycle, completion trend, and links to contributing issues. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee 2. backlog, active cycle, and completed views 3. keyboard-first navigation and command menu 4. issue comments, status history, and related links 5. cycle progress and a simple throughput chart DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Assign each issue an immutable team-scoped identifier and never reuse it after archive or deletion; links must resolve independently of title changes. 2. Use one fixed status workflow in v1 and record every status, priority, assignee, and cycle transition as an immutable event. 3. Allow only one active cycle for the team; cycle dates use the team timezone and rollover requires an explicit destination for incomplete issues. 4. Accept only validated GitHub issue or pull-request URLs, store them as related links, and do not imply synchronization with GitHub state. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Team, Issue, Cycle, Label, Comment. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Rails views and ordinary forms. Use Turbo for navigation, submissions, and server-driven updates, then Stimulus only for small browser-side behavior. Do not turn the product into a client-side SPA, and keep the core workflow usable when enhancement fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Ruby on Rails and Hotwire: Turbo for navigation, form submissions, and server-driven updates, and Stimulus for small browser-side behavior. Use RESTful controllers with strong parameters and explicit authorization, with domain transitions in testable models or small application services. Use Active Record migrations plus database-level constraints and transactions; Active Storage with an S3-compatible service for private files; Active Job with a durable queue backend for retryable work; Action Mailer for email; and Action Cable only when live updates are required. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, HTMX, D1 as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with GitHub issue or pull-request links. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Use durable unique identifiers and log every state transition. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a teammate anywhere in the app, when they invoke quick create and submit a title, a uniquely identified backlog issue is created and focused. 2. Given two users editing an issue from the same version, when both save, the stale save shows a conflict instead of overwriting the newer transition. 3. Given an active cycle ending with incomplete issues, when the owner closes it, completed work remains reported and each incomplete issue moves only to the confirmed destination. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
Build just one piece
Not ready to replace all of Linear? Fine. These are the peculiar sub-problems hiding inside it — the parts that are actually interesting to build. Each one is a standalone prompt, scoped to an evening, no strings attached to the full build.
ABC-123 forever: identifiers that never come backAtomic counters, permanent retirement, and links that outlive titles.
Build durable issue identifiers for a tracker: TEAM-123 style, unique forever, never recycled. Each team has a short key and a counter. Creating an issue atomically increments the counter and stamps the issue — two simultaneous creates must not mint the same number, so increment with a database-level atomic operation or row lock, never read-then-write. The counter only rises: deleting or archiving TEAM-87 retires that number permanently. Gaps are fine; reuse is the sin, because links, commit messages, and human memory all reference the identifier. Resolution is by identifier alone — the title can change daily and every old link still lands. Renaming a team's key is the spicy edge case: either forbid it, or keep old-key aliases resolving with a redirect, because TEAM-42 is written in a hundred commit messages you do not control. Add copy-link and copy-id actions on every issue, and identifier parsing that tolerates case and surrounding punctuation when pasted into search. Done when: concurrent creation under load never duplicates a number, a deleted issue's identifier is never reissued, and links survive title changes and key renames.
A command menu that’s faster than the mouseSubsequence fuzzy matching, context actions, and zero mouse required.
Build a keyboard-first command menu for an issue tracker — the interface for people who resent the mouse. One shortcut opens it anywhere. Typing filters a mixed list of commands and issues with subsequence fuzzy matching (crbg finds Create bug report): score matches by consecutive-character runs, word-boundary hits, and match position so the intuitive result ranks first, and highlight the matched characters in each result. Make it context-aware: with an issue focused, its actions — assign, change status, move to cycle — rank above global commands. Support command chaining: pick Change status and get a second-stage list of statuses in the same input. Recent selections earn a mild ranking boost. The fiddly parts: full arrow-key and enter navigation, focus trapped while open and restored precisely on close, results virtualized past a hundred rows, and search across a few thousand issues answering in under 50 milliseconds — precompute a lowercase index rather than running regexes per keystroke. Done when: every menu action is reachable without the mouse, fuzzy scoring puts the obvious answer first for your test queries, and open-type-enter feels instant at a few thousand issues.
Close the cycle without losing the leftoversEvery leftover issue gets an explicit destination, and reports freeze at close.
Build cycle close and rollover for a weekly-cycle issue tracker. The leftover issues are the whole problem. One active cycle per team, with dates in the team's timezone. Closing it is a deliberate ceremony, not a midnight cron surprise: present a rollover preview listing every incomplete issue and require an explicit destination for each — the next cycle, or the backlog — with grouping controls so fifty issues do not mean fifty clicks. No issue moves anywhere silently. Completed work stays credited to the closed cycle: the report freezes at close, and rolled-over issues appear in the next cycle without erasing where they have been — an issue's journey through three cycles is visible on the issue itself. Record scope movements as events (added to cycle, removed, rolled over) so reports can distinguish planned work from drive-by additions. Auto-create the next cycle from the cadence if it does not exist, and handle the happy case: closing a cycle with everything done skips the ceremony. Done when: no incomplete issue moves without a confirmed destination, closed-cycle reports never change afterward, and an issue rolled over twice shows its full cycle lineage.
The burn-down built from events, not snapshotsReplay the transition log to get charts that don’t lie.
Build cycle analytics computed from transition events, not from current state. Current state cannot answer the questions that matter: was this cycle's scope stable, and when did work actually finish? So treat every relevant change as an event — status transitions, cycle assignment and removal, each with timestamp and actor — and build the report by replaying them. Derive: completed versus remaining per day of the cycle (a burn-down that reflects reality, including mid-cycle scope jumps), scope added and removed after the cycle started with the responsible issues listed, and throughput across recent cycles. The tricky bookkeeping: an issue added, removed, then re-added counts once, with all its scope events shown; an issue completed then reopened inside the cycle moves the daily counts in both directions on the correct days. Compute on demand with a small cache keyed by the latest event id — invalidation is trivial because events only append. Every chart links back to its contributing issues, because a number you cannot interrogate is a rumor. Done when: the burn-down reconstructs any past day accurately from events alone, scope-change lists name every added and removed issue, and reopening an issue moves the daily counts correctly.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build your own Linear?
A basic version — issues, statuses, backlog view — takes about 12 hours. Roughly 4 days gets you a solid v1 with cycles, command menu, throughput chart, github links. Matching everything Linear really does (offline sync engine, real-time everything, roadmaps) is closer to 3 months+, which is exactly why you should scope down instead.
How much does Linear cost if I keep subscribing?
Linear runs $10–$16 per person per month on public paid plans, which is $120–$192 per year for every person on your team. A focused self-built replacement costs your build time plus close-to-zero hosting.
What stack should I use to build a Linear alternative?
The build prompt on this page ships in four flavors: the AHA stack (Astro, HTMX, Alpine.js), Next.js, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails. The capability context for this product is Astro, HTMX, D1. Pick the stack you already know — the scope matters more than the framework.
What features does a minimal Linear replacement need?
A useful v1 needs: fast issue creation with title, description, priority, label, and assignee; backlog, active cycle, and completed views; keyboard-first navigation and command menu; issue comments, status history, and related links; cycle progress and a simple throughput chart. Everything else is scope creep until you personally miss it.
What should I deliberately not build?
Do not build roadmaps, cross-team initiatives, custom workflows, or deep Git synchronization.
Does this build also replace Jira and Shortcut?
Yes. Linear, Jira and Shortcut all solve the same core job — capture, prioritize, and complete issues with minimal ceremony. The scoped v1 on this page covers what most people use any of them for, so one focused build replaces whichever you currently pay for.