How To Use Panda's Recap

The board

• Swimlanes (the rows) are your projects or areas of work. Columns (To Do → In Progress → Done) are the stages.
• Add a card with + Add Card at the bottom of any column.
• Drag cards between columns. Dropping one into a “timer” column (In Progress) starts the clock; the “done” column marks it complete.
• Resize a column or a swimlane by dragging the line at its edge. Double-click that line to put it back to the default size.
• Have more than one board? Switch between them using the board buttons just below the top bar. Create and manage boards, columns, and swimlanes in Settings.

Tracking time

• Hit ▶ on a card to start its timer. Only one runs at a time, so starting a new one stops the last.
• The timer pill up top shows what's running. Click it to jump straight to that card.
• Open a card to add or fix past time entries by hand. Handy if you forgot to hit start.

Cards

• Give a card a priority (the color), a due date, notes, and a key metric (“40 cases resolved”) that shows up in your Recap.
• Client and billable come from the swimlane by default, and you can override either on a single card. Tags and skills work the other way round: a card's are added to the swimlane's rather than replacing them.
• Skills are what the work took to do, where tags are what kind of work it was. “Development” is a tag. “Requirements Gathering” is a skill. Add them on a swimlane so every card in it inherits them, and on a card for anything that one piece of work needed on top.
• Skills are what your résumé is written from. Leave them empty and Panda falls back to guessing from your tags, which is a guess.
• A card opens with just the essentials. Hit + Add Details for the rest, and − Hide Details to fold it back up. When a card already has details, the button lists them so nothing is hidden from you.
• Under Add Details you can leave a card out of your Recap, your Reports, or both. Handy for imported “Busy” blocks or lunch: the time stays on your board and calendar, it just stops counting toward your review or your analytics. The same switches exist on a swimlane, which applies to every card in it.

The calendar

• A time grid of your work sessions, in Day or Week view. Each block is time tracked against a card.
• Click a time to start tracking there. Pick one of your cards, or create a new one, and the timer runs from the slot you clicked.
• Click a block to open its card. Due dates live on the card now, not the calendar.
• 📅 Import calendar turns a year of meetings into tracked work in one go, from a file you export yourself. See below.
• 🔗 Connect calendar (sign in with Google) links Google Calendar directly, so meetings keep arriving on their own. Also below.

Importing your calendar

Meetings are work, and they're usually the part you forget by review time. Export your calendar, drop the file on 📅 Import calendar (on the Calendar tab, or Settings → Bulk import), and each event becomes a task with its time already logged, worked out from the event's start and end. The file is read in your browser and never uploaded.

• File types: .ics (Outlook, Google, Apple) or .csv (classic desktop Outlook).
• Classic Outlook: File → Open & Export → Import/Export → Export to a file → Comma Separated Values → pick your Calendar folder. It asks for a date range at the end, so set it to the period you care about. This is the most reliable option.
• Google Calendar: Settings → Import & export → Export. It downloads a .zip, so unzip it first and import the .ics inside.
• Apple Calendar: select the calendar, then File → Export.
• New Outlook / Outlook on the web: there's no simple export, and many workplaces block it entirely. If you can, open the same account in classic Outlook and use the CSV route.

Two things worth knowing before you export:

• Watch out for "Availability only." If Outlook offers a detail level when saving a calendar, choose Full details. On the lowest setting every title is exported as “Busy” instead of the real name. Panda warns you if it spots this.
• All-day events log no hours. Their end date is the following day, so counting them would add 24 hours each. They still import, just without time.

Panda shows you what the file covers and lets you pick a date range before anything is imported, so a five-year export doesn't dump five years onto your board. If the file spans more than about 18 months, Panda narrows it to the last year for you; widen the dates if you actually wanted all of it.

Panda also lists any repeating events so you can skip the ones that aren't real work. If you hold a standing “Busy” slot every morning so nobody books you, that's hundreds of events that mean nothing in a review. Obvious placeholders (Busy, Focus time, Lunch, Out of office) are ticked to skip already; untick anything you do want, and tick anything else you don't.

Panda then asks where the meetings should go: a swimlane, a status, and optionally a client and project applied to all of them. On the next screen you can change any individual event before importing. Event descriptions become notes, and calendar categories become tags. Cancelled events are skipped.

Connecting Google Calendar (sign in with Google)

Importing a file is a one-off. 🔗 Connect calendar keeps your board in step with Google Calendar for good. You approve it once, review that first batch of history like any other import, and after that meetings arrive on their own while Panda's Recap is open.

• Upcoming meetings show up too. A meeting on Thursday appears on your board today, in your first column, with no time on it yet. Once it has actually happened, Panda logs how long it ran and moves it to done. The card arrives straight away; only the time waits.
• Nothing is silently piled on. Each batch shows a note in the corner saying what was added, with Undo if it isn't what you wanted.
• Placeholders are skipped by default, the same Busy / Lunch / Focus time list as file import. You can turn that off in Settings.
• Access is read-only. Panda can never create, change, or delete anything in your calendar. Your events are read by your browser straight from Google and never reach our servers, and we keep nothing that would let us look at your calendar when you're not using the app.
• Turn it off any time in Settings → Calendar. Anything already imported stays. To withdraw Panda's access altogether, use your Google Account permissions page.

You may see a Google screen saying the app isn't verified. Panda's Recap is new and Google's review takes a while; choose Advanced then continue if you're happy to. If you'd rather not, the file import above does the same job with no sign-off needed.

Reports

• A dashboard of where your time went. Each donut is a way to slice it (by swimlane, client, project, tag, skill, or billable).
• Time by Skill answers a different question from the rest: not where the hours went, but what they went into building. A card carrying two skills counts in both, so those totals can add up to more than your tracked time.
• Pick the period (day / week / month / quarter / YTD / custom) and step through past ones with the arrows.
• Click any card in a report to jump to it on the board. Export any view to CSV or Excel.

Invoices

• Turn tracked hours into an invoice. Every card marked Billable with a client on it becomes a line, and you type the rate when you generate.
• Start one from the Invoices tab, from the Invoice button on Reports, or from Generate Invoice on a single card if you bill per job.
• Every line is yours to change before it goes out. Fix the hours, reword it, add a line that was never on a card, or mark one Free for work you did at no charge. Editing here never changes your tracked time.
• Download as Word or PDF. Each one is saved to your history with its number, dates and totals, so you can find it again and mark it Paid.
• Set your details, how you want to be paid, and your default payment terms once in Settings → Invoices. Each invoice keeps its own copy, so changing them later never rewrites one you've already sent.
• Invoicing is part of Pro.

Review

• Your year, organized for a performance review. The Performance Review Draft turns your data into plain-language bullets. Copy it, or download it as Word or PDF.
• Organize by quarter, client, project, tag, or billable, and see billable vs. non-billable hours up top.
• The tables underneath show every task the numbers came from. Click any row to jump to that card on the board.
• ✨ AI Polish sits in the draft's toolbar and rewrites it into something you could hand your manager. See below.

Résumé

• Its own page, next to Review. Same tracked work, a different document: a review is first-person and about a period, a résumé is impersonal and about what you can do.
• Your Details collects the things your board can't know, and ✨ Generate Résumé writes the rest from everything you've finished. See below.
• There's no date range here. A résumé covers what you've done, not a quarter.

Ask Panda

• Ask questions about the work you've tracked, in your own words. When did I last do something for Acme? What else was I working on that week? Where did my time actually go?
• Answers are looked up on your own board. Panda searches it here in your browser and sends only the handful of cards needed to answer, never your whole year.
• The numbers are calculated by the app, not written by the AI. Hours and totals come from your real time entries, so they can't be off.
• Each answer shows the cards it came from underneath. Click one to jump straight to it and check.
• Conversations are kept in the list on the left, so you can come back to one. + New chat starts a fresh one, and 🗑 deletes any you're done with. They're stored in this browser only.
• Free with an account. Sign in and Panda answers anything about how the app works, how to set something up, or what things cost. Up to 150 questions a month.
• Reading your board is Pro, because searching a year of cards is the part that costs us. The buttons at the top of this screen still answer the three commonest ones for free, with no AI at all.
• Signed out, the same box searches this guide and shows you the part that answers you. No account and no AI.

Jobs

• Search open roles across several job boards at once. A job title, a country, and a city if you want one.
• Nothing about your board is sent. Only what you typed in the search boxes goes out.
• The City box suggests cities for the country you picked, but you can type anything, including a ZIP or a postcode.
• Remote only narrows what came back to roles that say they are remote.
• Clicking a result opens the original posting on whichever board it came from. You apply there, not here.

The AI features

All three are optional, all only ever run when you press the button, and all are part of Pro. If you never use them, nothing you've written leaves your browser.

• ✨ AI Polish rewrites the review draft into something you could hand your manager. The draft is plain-language but mechanical; this smooths it out.
• ✨ Generate Résumé (Pro) is a different job: it takes everything you finished and writes a résumé, not a review. A review is first-person and about a period; a résumé is impersonal and about what you can do. It groups many tasks into a handful of real accomplishments rather than listing your year.
• A résumé needs things your board can't know, so it asks once for your name, job title, employer, dates and education. Every field is optional. Signed in, they're saved to your account so a résumé written on your phone matches one written on your laptop. As a guest they stay in this browser and never reach us.
• Quicker still: upload the résumé you already have, as a PDF or a Word file. Panda reads it in your browser to pick up the history it can't know, your earlier jobs, education and qualifications, and rewrites your current role from what you've actually tracked. The file never leaves your device, only the text inside it, and only when you press Generate Résumé.
• Nothing is ever lost to a regeneration: the 🕘 History button keeps the last twenty of each. Signed in, they're on your account and open on any device you use. Open any version to read it, download it, or restore it back onto the page. Restoring is free and never spends a generation.
• Client names are left out by default. A recognisable client is powerful on a résumé, but naming your employer's clients can breach a confidentiality clause. Tick the box in Your details if you're sure it's fine, and your work is described by scale instead ("eight clients") if you're not.
• Both produce Word and PDF alongside Copy.

Read it before you send it. AI writes a convincing first draft and can still get things wrong, or word something more strongly than you would. That matters most on a résumé, which gets fact-checked in an interview. Check the names, the numbers, and anything that sounds like a claim you didn't make.

Settings

• Appearance: language (English / Español), light / dark / system theme, card style (sticky, flat, or clean), font, and text size.
• Calendar: set your work hours (the Day and Week grids open to this range), and pick a calendar card style that matches the board or has its own look. Once you've connected Google Calendar, this is also where you choose which swimlane new meetings land in, whether to skip placeholders, and where you stop syncing.
• Boards, columns & swimlanes: create and reorder them, including which columns track time and which mark work done. Manage your Clients / Projects / Tags / Skills lists here too.
• Archived tasks: review anything you've archived and restore it if you want it back.
• Bulk import: add a batch of tasks to the active board at once. Download a template, or drop in a spreadsheet from another tool and match up the columns. Calendar files (.ics / .csv) work here too, same as the Calendar tab.
• Data & backups: download a full .json backup or a spreadsheet-friendly .csv. Import & merge adds a backup on top of what you have; Restore replaces everything. Deleting a board or resetting downloads a backup first, so nothing is ever truly gone.
• About: links to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Heads up: Sign in with Google (top right) and your boards sync to your account across devices. As a guest, they live only in this browser. Either way, download a backup from Settings → Data & backups now and then so you never lose anything.

What Kanban is

Kanban started on Toyota's factory floor and moved into office work in the 2000s. The idea is simple: put every piece of work on a card, put the cards on a board, and move them left to right as they progress. Nothing stays hidden in your head or your inbox.

Four ideas carry most of the value:

• See the work. A board shows what you have actually committed to. A list of intentions in your head does not.
• Limit what's in progress. The one people skip, and the one that matters. Use set limit at the top of a column. When it's full, finish something before starting something else.
• Watch the flow, not the effort. The useful question is how long a card takes to cross the board, not how busy you felt. Reports shows that as cycle time.
• Say what Done means. A card in Done should need nothing further from you. If it does, it isn't done, and your Recap will overstate your year.

Panda's Recap adds time tracking on top, so the board records how long work took as well as that it happened. A year of both is what your Recap gets written from.