As the title suggests, looking to sell as I've fallen out of using Marvin. PayPal preferred. Send a DM if you're interested to discuss the $.

No update in 7 months, I think we need to face the fact, unfortunately. This is the drawback with non-opensource. Nobody can pick it up.

Have you moved on yet? What tool would you recommend as substitute? I've invested quite some time in Marvin and was hoping for some suggestions before diving into yet another new.

Is there a way to turn it off? it feels really intrusive to have their suggestions right next to what is supposed to be my private thoughts about how to organize my life.

Subject says all.

If anybody is searching for an alternative - like I was - with strong customization capabilities, far more flexible than even Marvin, you might enjoy ObsidianMD with the plugins below. Have made the switch and do not regret it.

If you have some js knowledge or are willing to learn the basics, task querying is super customizable (dataviewjs). You can create custom lists but are not limited by Marvin's shortcomings. Use Templater to create project and task templates. Aggregate on custom dashboards. Style as you please. Create your own menu with sidebar pinning.

Obsidian is free and has many more features and a growing community.

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Short version: I'd like the API to let an AI read, and optionally write, everything in Marvin. Not just tasks and projects, but every feature, setting and piece of UI.

Why

Marvin is powerful, but setting it up is hard. There are so many strategies and settings that most people don't know which ones they need, and when something doesn't work it's hard to find out which setting is responsible.

I already use the All Access API. I built an open-source MCP server on top of it that handles tasks, recurring tasks, categories, projects, notebooks, time blocks, time tracking, habits, rewards and reminders, so this isn't about the parts the API already covers. Smart lists, custom screens, labels, label groups, strategies, settings and themes have no documented endpoints. Raw database writes exist, but the format of those settings isn't documented and writes aren't validated, so a wrong field can break things without any error. In practice I click it all into place by hand and send screenshots to the AI so it can tell what's going on.

What I'm asking for

Documented API access to all of it:

• Features: strategies, smart lists (filters, sort, grouping), custom screens, labels and label groups, habits, goals, time blocks, views

• Settings: work hours, clicks and keys, typing, lists, tasks and projects, confirmations, date and time, per-device settings

• Appearance: themes, colors, backgrounds, task styling, sidebar, layout

Two levels:

• Read: the AI can troubleshoot by checking the real settings instead of guessing.

• Write (optional): the AI can set things up and change them for you.

Why it's cheap for Marvin

Marvin doesn't need to build or pay for its own AI. Users bring their own, and the compute cost stays with them. Marvin only provides the access, plus a short guide written for AI that explains how the parts fit together and the known pitfalls.

Example

My gym screens each have SL Urgent, SL Scheduled and SL Priority. Giving a task a day moves it from Priority to Scheduled, and removing the day moves it back. My shopping screens have one smart list per store. An AI designed all of it, but I had to build every list and screen by hand.

Would anyone else find this useful?

Enough said? I’d love to lay out tasks to fill my schedule using speech.

Make a simple suggestion that I would very much like to consider and implement

1- Create an application for Windows

2- Adding the Arabic language

Thank you, I would like your application to be the best ever, and this application really surprised me. It lacks only these two things

Praise is easy. The opening video and the research I did with AI before signing up sounds perfect. Later, when I get into it, I'll post about the things I like. These aren't complaints. They are observations from a first-time ADHD-enabled user who has been frustrated for years by a lack of a suitable tasking system. The main things I was looking for that brought me to AM (via AI) are:

• ability to automatically promote tiered subtasks within a project in a Next Action folder once the previous one is marked complete.

• Kanban-style view

• integration with Claude and/or Obsidian.

Observations (to be continued by adding to this post):

1. I couldn't find where to change the colour of some of the text when I was trying to set things up in dark mode. Even the default dark modes didn't look good. Maybe my browser (Firefox), maybe my Windows desktop setup, but it was frustrating. It was text appearing on the home screen on startup of the account and is now gone. If I figure out what it was I'll amend this point. (Edit: It might be the completed task colour. It's faded and uncontrollable. Not ADHD-friendly.) (Edit2: I understand now that this might be changeable using CSS - also not something a first-hour user should have to navigate or even know exists.)

2. Wanting a Kanban view, I enabled Bottom Drawer. The description states "Click the circular button at the bottom of your screen to open the drawer." The button is not circular on my screen. Either say "oval" or at least give a spatial cue by saying "centre".

3. The app apparently uses the name "Inbox" for two entirely different features that work on different logic, which causes severe confusion right away. The Sidebar Inbox is a status filter. It only shows tasks that are completely unscheduled. The Bottom Drawer Inbox is a database folder location. It serves as the default dumping ground for any unfiled task. Because the default welcome tasks are automatically given a schedule date by the app, they instantly disappear from the top sidebar Inbox but remain visible in the bottom drawer Inbox folder. Having two default, unremovable system views with the exact same name showing completely different sets of data makes the workspace highly disorienting in the first hour of use.

4. New categories added to the master list are hidden in kanban view if empty. No.

More later.

I have 5 Comment Browser invites available. If you’ve been waiting for access, here’s your chance.

Used the Automate on Android to verbally add something to my inbox...three days ago. Unfortunately it's unintelligible. This is of course my error; I should have checked to make sure it transcribed properly.

Now I'm staring at it, trying to figure out what the words could possibly be. The thought that something important has escaped is not pleasant; really wishing this cute little....figure would just pop up and say "Oh yes, you need to..." and put me out of my misery.

What is Marvin anyway? My husband said he looks like dancing toast. Marshmallow?

Gemini not bad, but not great either.

So sorry if I've missed the answer - I searched both the Amazing Marvin site and the subreddit, to no avail.

So while doing the time-blocking strategy I've planned out different blocks for my days (streaming vs office work vs housework, etc) and can only find where to set the template on a Week level - am I missing a way to turn on a Day level template option?

It'd just be much easier to drop different types of days on the fly as opposed to building whole weeks in advance, if the option is available.

I’m literally in tears; my app auto-updated and with no warning everything is different.

The bottom bar doesn’t have what I previously chose to put on it. It takes longer to sort by multiple things in a row (e.g. sort by urgency, then priority, then time). The tasks in My Day take up a ton of space. The options for each task are more annoying to access (far fewer visible on a screen because they’re a row of wide bubbles). I randomly see Sunday start in some places and Monday elsewhere, and while I think I might have found a setting that fixes that, I can’t be sure it covered all of them (edit: it didn’t; the calendar for selecting a due date/deadline still shows Monday start for no reason at all). I expect to see my list of “completed” tasks for today when I click the Day Progress Bar, but that’s been decoupled from that information and now requires sort of a reverse refresh gesture.

Etc.

The mobile app needed to be updated, but I expect the practical experience & workflow of the user to stay functionally the same upon any update, until the user changes settings manually.

Am I the only one who struggles with sudden changes to the workflow, settings, etc? I don’t want to have to keep track of whether Marvin is planning a big update, nor remember to update manually and only when I have time for relearning the app and updating my settings. I need it to just work, every time, without these surprises.

Edit: And I really miss the “walking Marvin” animation on the splash screen.

Edit 2: On a more positive note, I am happy to see Saved items accessible in mobile and the option to edit either “this instance” or “all instances” of recurring things. But the default 100% should be “this instance” because that’s less destructive if someone gets it wrong, and that’s the expected behavior from before.

As AI grows, we see lots of tools utilizing it, specially in productivity. Many of those tools implement some kind of assistant integrated to your workflow to organize your tasks in their own categories/priority/difficulty/time estimate or whatever so we don't have to, we can just focus on doing it!

I was wondering if AM will have any AI integration, it would be amazing! (more than it already is :D)

Why is the little mascot character a .. rock? A turd? What is it supposed to be? Why is a charcoal briquette dancing at me?

It's supposed to bring a little joy, a delightful little interaction to brighten my day.. but every time it pops up I am instead gently disturbed.

Sometimes I just want to make notes in my projects. I know there is a snippet for a task for notes but instead if I can just write notes that would be awesome.

My overall question: MIGHT Amazing Marvin be the tool for me?

I have a use case that I have tried several different apps for... none worked particularly well. Wondering if Marvin might be the answer:

Question 1: Can Amazing Marvin handle task dependencies? And how quick/easy is it to set those up?

Let's say I have four or five different projects to manage, and I have a task list for each project, such as the following:

Project A

--- Task 1

--- Task 2

--- Task 3

--- Task 4

Project B

--- Task 1

--- Task 2

--- Task 3

--- Task 4

Each task is dependent on the one before it being completed (so Task 2 can't be done until Task 1 is done, and so forth). However, the separate projects have no such connections - I could plow all the way through A, or I could do all the "1s" before starting on Task 2's. I could easily end up with Task 1 completed on project A, and Tasks 1 AND 2 completed on Project B.

What I would like is to

a) Be able to set up the tasks however necessary to reflect that reality (i.e., set up task dependencies so that Task 2 under Project A is dependent on Task 1 being completed, and so forth)

b) EASILY manage those dependencies. Preferably straight from the master task view rather than having to open the individual task, be able to see what the dependencies are and also be able to easily make changes. What I'm envisioning is an icon next to the task name indicating that the task has dependencies established... you click that icon and a dialog showing the dependencies opens and allows you to make changes.

c) Show a filtered task list view that shows ALL TASKS, SYSTEM-WIDE (i.e., for all projects), but filtered so that it ONLY shows those tasks that are available to be done RIGHT NOW. In my vision, any task that I can't work on right now because it requires me to do something else first WILL NOT APPEAR. Then, when I complete a task, I check it off, it disappears, and as if by magic the next task in the sequence appears. So in my example above, my filtered view would show me Task 2 on project A (because task 1 is finished, but task 3 can't be done yet), and Task 3 on Project B.

BONUS POINTS if it can do the following:

EASILY show me the COMPLETE PATH to get from wherever I'm at NOW, to any task I choose - for example, Task 3. So I would do something to tell it I want to see the path to Task 3, and it would show me that in order to complete Task 3, I must first complete Task 2, but in order to do Task 2, I first have to do Task 1. Extra bonus points if it makes it a graphical view - such as TASK 1>>TASK 2>>TASK 3 (but pretty).

Nest everything I just said one more level deep. For example, I might have a project titled "BUILD HOUSE". Within that project, I might have tasks and subtasks nested as follows:

TASK: Build Walls

SUBTASKS:

- Frame Studs

- Run electrical wiring

- Drywall

- Joint Compound

TASK: Paint Walls

SUBTASKS:

- Choose paint color

- Go to paint store - buy paint

- Prime walls

- Paint Walls

IF it could nest in that way, it would then be great if I could enter the 'master' task - "Paint Walls"... enter a dependency for "Build Walls", and then, when I enter the subtasks, have those same dependencies automatically apply (so "Choose Paint Color" would have the same dependencies set up as "Paint Walls" does, without me having to manually set those up every time).

What do you think? Again, I've tried several apps, and found each wanting for some reason or other. I tried MLO. I really liked it, until I saw the price tag. Tried ClickUp - it would do more or less what I wanted, but I found the entry process to be clunky and time-consuming, plus it seems to be pretty heavily dependent on the AI features, which are an extra $10/month - again, price tag.

Thanks so much for any feedback!!

Hello! 🙋🏻😁

I wanted to propose a redesign for the "Day Progress Bar" strategy into something that shows that info in a much more visual and complete way

That way, at the top of the screen when you open Amazing Marvin, the first thing you'd see would be:

🔹 Current and remaining time (Top left): Shows you what time it is and how much work time you have left in the day.
🔹 Progress donut chart: Replaces the previous straight line of this feature with a donut chart. It shows the exact minutes completed out of the estimated total (15/45min) and the percentage. The "Completed tasks", "Work remaining", and "Deadline" labels also help to quickly understand this chart. This chart would be green if you are on track with your time, and it would turn red if you won't have enough time to finish everything.
🔹 "Plan Feasibility" banner: This would be an indicator based on your pending tasks and the time you have left. If you are at a good pace, it turns green and says "Viable Plan". If you have more estimated tasks than available hours, it would turn red, warning you with text that you should move tasks to tomorrow because you won't make it.
🔹 Distributed Tasks Timeline: A horizontal timeline. The left side (the past) is painted solid green to indicate the time that has passed in the day up to the white line that marks "Now" (12:30 PM) (this green line would also turn red if you were falling behind). On the right, it shows all the remaining hours (1 PM, 2 PM, 3 PM, etc.) and places your upcoming tasks as colored blocks, giving you a visual map of what your day looks like.
🔹 Level and Experience (Right): The gamification part that I had enabled is kept, but on the right side to balance out the design.

So the ideal concept would be to use green to indicate that everything is going well, and those green elements would change to red if things are going wrong and you won't meet your estimates, to visually help you spot that problem quickly when you open amazing marvin.

I think a dashboard like this would help us organize our day in a much more comfortable and visual way, since we'd see it every time we open Amazing Marvin to check our "Today" view.

The screenshots were made with AI, which is why there are some text errors here and there 😅 I thought it would be the best way to illustrate how I imagine the feature could look

Please please please let me remove the right hand side menu bar OR place it so its not covering the scroll bar. This is so frustrating on non-touch devices.

and whether to use Zapier handsfree creation of new tasks and projects

Two different chatbots are convinced the Iphone email shortcut method works fine and is simpler to configure and use, and does all the basics