Ship the project,
not the process.
cadence. is a phase-gate operating system for modern teams. Portfolio, projects, and tasks — one spine, zero ceremony.
The cadence. app showing an NPD project for a sparkling yuzu drink: five phases from Concept to Launch, a task list for the active Development phase, and a gate checklist with approval criteria. The sidebar lists Home, Templates and Notifications, then recent projects.
Everything hangs off the gate.
Templates set the phases, tasks fill them, and the portfolio view rolls them up. All of it exists to make one moment unambiguous: whether this phase is actually done.
A phase cannot close while a criterion is open.
Every phase ends at a gate, and the gate has criteria someone has to sign off. Leave one incomplete and the phase will not close. Pass one conditionally and the gate closes with that recorded against it, so the compromise is still there to read six months later.
Completing a phase starts the next one and moves the project with it. That cascade is the whole product.
Gate 3, the Development exit for a sparkling yuzu drink: two of four criteria are met, so the phase cannot be completed yet.
Start from a template
Six processes with the criteria a real gatekeeper signs off. Copy one and the project is structured.
Every project in flight
Its phase, its gate, and whether it is on track, at risk or off track. One screen for the portfolio.
Open on a sentence
Most tools open on a list. Home says what needs deciding and which project is slipping, and why.
Gate performance over time
On-time gate rate, open blockers, and the phases flagging themselves at risk before they slip.
The status report writes itself.
Digests, specs and summaries come out of what your team actually did this week, counted from tasks, comments and gates rather than guessed at. You keep the judgement calls.
- Assisted template generation
- Tailored project specifications
- Time-bound project summaries
- Weekly digests of what needs attention
- Assign work to agents
An AI-generated weekly digest in cadence.: the Development phase is 68% complete and at risk, with packaging artwork blocking one of its gate criteria.
The same loop, over three surfaces.
A full REST API, webhooks on every gate, and native MCP. Your agents get the same operations your team does, because they run through the same domain layer.
REST API
You call usFull CRUD on projects, phases, tasks and gate criteria. Every key is scoped read or write and every request runs under the same row-level security your session does.
Webhooks
We call youGate approvals, phase transitions and task changes are pushed as they happen. A passed gate names the phase it just unlocked, so the receiver does not have to work it out.
AI assistants over MCP
Your agent calls usPoint Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client at your workspace and it can run the project in plain language. Agent actions are attributed, so you can always tell them from a person.
One lap of the process.
cadence. runs the whole product lifecycle on a single rhythm, and the end of it is the start of the next one.
- 01
Choose a template
Start from a phase-gate process that already has its gates, or let AI draft one around your product.
- 02
Assemble your team
Skills-based allocation puts the right people on the right tasks before the first phase opens.
- 03
Run the phases
Work moves when its gate criteria are met, and every phase reports whether it will make its date.
- 04
Fold it back in
Review gate performance after each phase and push what you learned into the template you started from.
Every lap leaves the template sharper than it found it.
The free plan is a real plan.
Ten projects, five people and the whole phase-gate method, indefinitely. Pro is what you buy when you want the platform underneath it.
Free
For individuals and small teams getting started.
- Up to 2 templates
- Up to 10 projects
- Up to 5 team members
- Phase-gate methodology
- AI-powered templates
Pro
For growing teams who need more power.
- Unlimited templates
- Unlimited projects
- Unlimited team members
- REST API (1,000 req/min)
- Webhooks
- MCP AI Access
- Priority support
- Everything in Free
Enterprise
For organisations with advanced needs.
- Everything in Pro
- Unlimited API requests
- Priority webhooks
- Custom integrations
- Enterprise support & SLAs
- Self-hosting option
- Dedicated account manager
Questions worth asking first
How is cadence. different from other project management tools?
It is opinionated. Phase-gate is the model, not one of forty you could configure, so there is no setup project standing in front of your actual project. Pick a template and start.
Is cadence. only for FMCG and physical products?
No. Phase-gate works anywhere a decision point is worth defending. NPD teams are the sweet spot, but agencies, startups and enterprise product orgs run the same machinery.
Is cadence. suitable for small teams?
Yes, and it is one of the few places phase-gate scales down well. A solo founder gets the same gates as a 200-person NPD organisation, just fewer of them.
How will I know when a project is going off track?
Every phase carries a health signal scored from its own gate criteria, overdue tasks, unassigned critical work, and whether enough time is left for the work remaining. Hover it for the reasons, or generate a weekly digest of what changed, what's blocked, and what needs a decision.
Who can see my team’s data?
Only your team. Tenancy is enforced in Postgres by row-level security rather than in application code, so every request path — the app, the REST API, and MCP — is scoped to your team by the database itself. API keys carry read or write scope and nothing wider.
Start your next project on a process that holds.
Free plan, no card, no setup call. Pick a template and open the first gate.