The dashboard
The dashboard is the first screen, and it asks one question: what needs you right now? Not what exists — the catalogue answers that — but what is waiting.
Nothing on this screen changes anything. Every row is a way into somewhere else.
Needs a decision
Section titled “Needs a decision”Releases whose date is close and whose work is not ready for it: a missing draft, a missing score, a role the release kind requires. Each row says what is lacking in words, carries the same readiness marks the calendar uses, and clicking it opens the work — on the Score tab when the score is what is missing.
Overdue slots sort to the top and are drawn in red. A date that has passed with the work still unfinished is the loudest thing kilna has to say.
A gap further off than a week is not listed here. It is real, but it is not a decision yet, and a dashboard that lists everything eventually gets ignored.
Next 7 days
Section titled “Next 7 days”Everything holding a slot inside the week, soonest first, ready or not — the week as it actually stands. A release that is ready appears here with a tick and nothing else to do; that is the point of seeing it.
Closest to release
Section titled “Closest to release”Work that has been scored and is going nowhere: nothing booked, nothing out. The strongest first, because that is the order you would pick them up in. This is the shortlist of what to work on next, not the whole catalogue — six at most.
Nothing has judged these yet
Section titled “Nothing has judged these yet”Works with no score at all, listed as names. Nothing can rank them until something does, so they cannot appear anywhere else on this screen. Clicking one opens it on the Score tab.
Already-released work is left out of every section, including this one. The rule holds across kilna: the automation shows what can still be done, never what is finished.
Worth doing
Section titled “Worth doing”Below the sections above, the focus board: standing complaints the workspace noticed about itself, and lines you put there yourself. The two look alike and behave differently, and the difference is worth knowing.
What the workspace noticed
Section titled “What the workspace noticed”Things that are true today and were true last week. A score that describes a draft you have since rewritten. The weakest work holding a slot while something stronger waits. A draft nobody has opened in a month.
Nothing here changes anything. A finding names a work and what is off about it; clicking the text opens the work at the tab that answers it. Where a profile action fits the complaint, it is offered as a button — pressing it starts that action in a chat of its own, exactly as it would from the work’s own card. The answer arrives as a proposal you apply or ignore. The assistant never writes to your workspace.
Findings the sections above already show are left out rather than said twice.
A finding says nothing about work that has gone out, a date that has passed, or a slot you settled by hand — the same rule the catalogue’s gap filters follow: the automation shows what can still be done. And the weak-slot complaint stays quiet unless there is genuinely something stronger to put there; telling you a work is weak with no alternative is a remark, not a finding.
A finding has no pin and no place in an order you set. It does not need one: it appears when its complaint becomes true and leaves the moment it stops being true, without anything having to remember it.
Heard it
Section titled “Heard it”The × on a finding puts that complaint away. What is remembered is the complaint itself, not the work and not the kind — so the same complaint stays quiet, and a changed one is news again.
That distinction is the whole point. A draft you dismissed after a month of silence comes back when it has sat four; a work you told kilna you had heard about its missing score says nothing more about the score, but still speaks up when its slot turns out to be the weak one. Hiding is answering this, not silencing the work.
Everything put away is behind a count at the bottom of the board — 3 put away
— which opens into the list. Clicking one shows it again. Nothing is hidden
permanently and nothing is hidden by accident beyond recovery.
Complaints about a work you later delete are forgotten the next time kilna starts.
Your own lines
Section titled “Your own lines”Add a line puts a note on the board: something to keep in front of you that kilna would never notice on its own — a question for a collaborator, an artwork you are waiting on, a decision you want to sleep on.
A note is yours, so it behaves the opposite way to a finding. It stays until you rub it out. You can drag it by its handle to put it where you want, and pin it to keep it at the top. The automation never removes one and never reorders one.
When it is quiet
Section titled “When it is quiet”A workspace where everything is scored, booked or shipped — and where nothing was found worth doing — says so in a single line. That is the screen working, not failing: there is genuinely nothing waiting on you, and inventing something to show would be worse than saying so.
One standing finding is enough to keep the screen busy. A scored, booked work whose draft moved after the score appears in no section above, and claiming nothing is waiting while that stands would be a confident lie.
The board stays on a quiet morning even when the sections are gone: your own lines and the way back to what you put away are the parts of this screen that are yours, and a quiet day is exactly when they are worth reading.