Seven people's deploy schedule on one screen

Company and colleague names, internal addresses and anything key-like are all removed or replaced with pseudonyms. But the numbers the decisions rested on stay as they are — without them there is no way to know why anything was built the way it was.

A tool for seeing seven teammates' tasks and deploy schedule on one screen. It runs on my Mac. "Deploy" means putting what you built onto the real service.

• Built with only the basic tools, nothing borrowed from outside
• The data is one file inside my Mac. Anyone connecting from far away can only look
• Every change is recorded, and can be undone in batches

Two principles that kept paying off

1. Measure the real data before building. Do not attach features by feel.
2. Confirm on screen. Several times the code was right and the screen was wrong.

Measured, and it was a different tool

I counted the real data. 18 deploys, 11 tasks. I thought it was a task manager, and it was actually a deploy manager.

But the signals needed to judge a deploy were missing.

What I found	What I added
A deploy 27 days unfinished with no marker on screen	A N days late marker, at the top
A day with 7 deploys stacked on it, invisible in the calendar	deploys N beside the date, emphasised past three
No way to see how much of a linked worksheet was done	A 2/5 progress figure

At first I searched for lateness only in the current month, and found it disappearing when the month changed, by looking at a screenshot. A warning that vanishes when last month scrolls away means nothing.

Progress needed care too. With no linked worksheet, drawing 0/0 as 0% becomes a false signal reading "not even started." So it draws nothing.

Trying to open it up from outside, I found a hole

Trying to attach a path so I could see it from outside the house, I found a hole that collapses the permission check.

• It was judging "is this me or someone else" from the connecting address alone. But when a request comes through a path, they all look like the same machine's address. Everyone from outside becomes "me": edit and delete, of course, and even downloading the whole dataset. The look-only marker does not even appear. → I cut a separate door entirely. Requests arriving by that door are treated as outsiders regardless of address. The server itself applies the marker, so it cannot be forged.
• Another website could send commands to my tool. Leave any site open and that page could quietly send requests. → Blocked three ways.
• The settings file holding a key could be read by another account on the same computer. → Narrowed the permission.

Having no backup was the biggest risk

The data itself was 270 KB, and the part not yet merged into it was 4.1 MB. Copy only the main file and the recent data goes missing wholesale.

• It now makes one complete copy with both parts merged
• After making it, it opens that copy and counts the rows — a backup that will not open is not a backup
• It runs automatically at 9 a.m. every day. If the server dies it restarts itself
• The key does not go in the auto-start settings file. Other accounts can read that file

A green test that was checking nothing

I corrected two checks.

One was my own expected value being wrong — I had left out a substitute holiday.

The other had a symbol in the test code misread as a plain character, so the value always came out as 1. Fixing it revealed the true value — a check that had been convincingly green was confirming nothing.

The screen was fixed by measuring, not by feel

Colour was not the problem. Body text and secondary text both passed. The problem was space.

Item	Before	After
Calendar	1114px of content in 470px of space (over half cut off)	Nothing cut off
Area above the calendar	34% of the screen	Halved
Top bar	162px · two rows · 23 buttons	97px · one row
Height per week	90–316px, uneven	Uniform
Very small text	50 instances	1

It was a screen you open to see the month, on which you could not see the month.

Six weeks now divide the height equally, and an overflowing week folds into +N more, expanding on click.

Along the way I realised I had not looked at the light theme once all day. Checking it, the secondary text was only scraping through, so I made it darker.

If it cannot be undone, people will not touch it

Of 18 deploys only 3 had a worksheet linked, while 46 worksheets were unlinked. Build the progress figure and it is a blank screen with no links.

I found one of the reasons. There was no way to unlink. Link the wrong one and there was no option but editing the data by hand. When something cannot be undone, people hesitate to do it.

I built unlinking, and made linking work right inside the item's own view. Candidates now show that item's owner's worksheets first.

Linking and unlinking are recorded, but they are not undoable — undoing would not change the link on the real worksheet side, so pretending it can be undone would be a lie.

Nothing gets drawn on days off

The rule of drawing nothing on weekends and public holidays was extended to leave as well. Writing "on leave" on a day off tells nobody anything.

But leave containing no working day at all — a single Saturday, say — is still drawn, because hiding it makes it data nobody can touch.

How I decided to reach it from outside

No login built inside this tool. A user list, staying signed in, storing passwords and limiting attempts all follow, and the current permission structure would have to be replaced wholesale.

Login goes to the path in front, and the tool itself stays simple.

• If only my own devices will see it — a service that connects devices directly
• If teammates will see it too — a path service with login layered on top
• Opening a port on the router is not an option — this tool has no login at all

And the real bottleneck for "manage it while away" is not login. It is the computer being on. Carry the laptop out and no path helps.

Where it stands

• 153 unit checks and 18 screen checks, all passing
• The server is always on, and backs up at 9 a.m. every day
• Highest-value next step: linking worksheets to the remaining deploy items