Getting Started

When you sign up, Karea opens your first project with a few example tasks. A project is a workspace; inside it, tasks are grouped into categories (the columns, such as Bugs or Growth). Add a category with New category at the end of the board, and a project with the + next to Projects in the sidebar, or type /np Client website.

The bar above the board filters by deadline (Today, This Week, Unplanned), by Blocked or Overdue, and by status. Press V to switch between the Categories and Priority views, and J / K to move through tasks.

Click New task in the sidebar or press N. Fill in the title and, if you like, a deadline, priority, category, assignee and tags. Or choose Create on the Karea AI strip and just describe the task in your own words: Karea AI fills the form for you to check, or creates it straight away.

If you prefer typing, the command bar at the bottom of every page does the same in one line: /nt -cat Bugs -n Fix login redirect -prio 1 -sla tomorrow. See Commands for every flag.

Click a task to open its page. Change its status, priority, project, category, assignee and recurrence from the properties on the right; write the description, subtasks and closing requisites (a checklist that must be done before the task can close) on the left. Related holds notes, open questions, meetings, resources and the AI sessions that worked on it, History every change, and Markdown a longer document. Press R for Related and D for Details; on Related, a number opens the section with that number.

Statuses go from Open to Doing, Review and Done, with Blocked, Backlog and Cancelled on the side. Put a task in Doing when you start it, so it shows in the Doing now strip. More in Tasks & Views.

Today lays out your work sessions, meetings and deadlines on one timeline. The Planner shows the week: drag a task from Unscheduled onto a day to plan a work session for it, and drag it again to move it. Meetings sit at the top of each day. See Planner and Meetings.

Press Space (or click the bar at the bottom) and type in plain English, without a /. The AI answers questions about your tasks and makes changes for you: "move all overdue tasks to friday", "what is blocked?", "recap me on what happened today". Task IDs in its replies open the task.

For a written summary of a day or a week, open Recap and generate a chat or email version (on paid plans). See Recap & AI.

Press Cmd/Ctrl+P to open the Quick Actions Panel over the page you are on: today's plan, meetings, tasks from any project, open questions and resources, with a search across all of them. Check something, add a note or join a meeting, press Esc, and you are back where you were. Cmd/Ctrl+K opens the command palette, for jumping to any page. See More Features and Shortcuts.

Karea runs an MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT and other AI apps can read and update your tasks while they work for you. In Claude or ChatGPT:

1. Open Settings, then Connectors, and add a custom connector.
2. Paste the server URL https://karea.app/api/mcp.
3. Sign in to Karea and approve.

For Claude Code, install the Karea skill from Settings, Claude Skill. The full guide, with what to do when a connection fails, is in Connect AI apps; API keys and the list of MCP tools are in the Developer reference.

Karea Connect runs the AI coding tools on your own laptop, PC or server, and lets you work with them from inside Karea, end-to-end encrypted. Your code stays on your machine.

1. Open Settings, Karea Connect, and click Pair a machine.
2. Run the command it shows on that machine (it needs Node.js 20 or newer), choose the folders Karea may open there, and a passphrase that encrypts everything between your browser and the machine.
3. On a task, click Connect, pick the machine, the tool and the folder, and start. The session gets the task as its brief.

Every session, running or finished, is on the Connect page in the sidebar, grouped by machine and project. A session that needs an answer shows it, wherever you are in Karea. Each project can have a default machine and folder, so a new session for it is ready to start. See Karea Connect.