Projects
Project lifecycle, energy types, capacity governance, sub-projects, health scoring, and journal.
What is a Project?
A project is a Layer 3 committed initiative, something you are actively working on or have deliberately parked. Projects are the central organizing unit of Foundry. Ideas, assets, decisions, commitments, and journal entries all live under projects.
Creating a project is a serious act. It means you're committing a finite resource, your attention, to this initiative. Foundry's capacity governance enforces this seriousness: you set a maximum number of active projects, and the system alerts you when you exceed it.
Projects are not:
- A backlog of things you might do someday (those are parked ideas)
- A folder for organizing notes (use tags for categorization)
- A task list (Foundry has no tasks, use commitments for external promises)
Project Lifecycle
ACTIVE
↔
PARKED
(bidirectional, park and unpark freely)
ACTIVE
→
COMPLETED
(via close project with reflection)
ACTIVE
→
ARCHIVED
(via settings, no reflection)
| Status | Counts Against Capacity? | Visible in Default View? | Can Reactivate? |
|---|---|---|---|
| -------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------- | ---------------- |
| ACTIVE | Yes | Yes | N/A (already active) |
| PARKED | No | Yes (in parked section) | Yes, change to ACTIVE |
| COMPLETED | No | No (in archive view) | No, terminal state |
| ARCHIVED | No | No (in archive view) | Yes, change to ACTIVE |
Project Fields. Complete Reference
| Field | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ------- | ------ | ---------- | --------- | ------------- |
| Name | Text | Yes | , | Project name. Shown everywhere, lists, focus page, today, selectors. |
| Description | Text | No | null | What this project is about. Shows on project detail page. |
| Color | Hex string | No | #6366f1 (indigo) | Visual identifier. Appears as a dot/stripe next to the project name. |
| Status | Enum | Yes | ACTIVE | ACTIVE, PARKED, ARCHIVED, COMPLETED |
| Energy Type | Enum | No | null | COMPOUNDING, DRAINING, NEUTRAL, MAINTENANCE. See below. |
| Maintenance Burden | Integer (0-10) | No | 0 | How much ongoing maintenance this project requires. 0 = none, 10 = constant. |
| Strategic Score | Integer (0-10) | No | 0 | How strategically important this project is. Used in capacity warnings. |
| Phase | Text | No | null | Current phase label (freeform, e.g. "MVP", "Growth", "Winding Down"). |
| Milestones | Text array | No | [] | List of milestone labels. Freeform, no dates or completion tracking. |
| Parent Project | Reference | No | null | Parent project for nesting. Creates sub-project hierarchy. |
Energy Types
Every project can be classified by its energy type, how it affects your capacity and portfolio health over time:
Compounding
Gets more valuable over time. Builds audience, skills, or systems.
Draining
Costs more than it creates. Every dollar requires your direct time.
Neutral
Neither compounds nor drains. Steady work without strong trajectory.
Maintenance
Requires active upkeep to keep running. Infrastructure, compliance, legacy.
Why energy types matter:
- The Focus page shows your energy mix, the breakdown of compounding vs draining vs maintenance across active projects
- The system generates warnings when your portfolio is all-draining or heavily maintenance
- Energy types help you make park/activate decisions: when choosing what to work on, prefer compounding over draining
Sub-Projects
Projects can be nested, any project can have a parent project, creating a two-level hierarchy. Sub-projects appear indented under their parent in the Projects list and Focus page.
Key rules:
- Only top-level projects (no parent) count against the capacity limit
- Sub-projects inherit their parent's color by default
- Sub-projects have their own independent status, a parent can be ACTIVE while a sub-project is PARKED
- There is no limit to the number of sub-projects under a parent
- Nesting is limited to one level (no sub-sub-projects)
When to use sub-projects: Use them to break a large initiative into distinct workstreams. For example, a "Launch Product X" project might have sub-projects for "Build MVP", "Marketing Site", and "Payment Integration".
Project Health Score
Each active project has a health score from 0 to 100, calculated from three signals:
| Signal | Weight | How It's Scored |
|---|---|---|
| -------- | -------- | ---------------- |
| Journal Activity | 40% | Number of journal entries in the last 7 days × 25 (capped at 100) |
| Commitment Completion | 35% | (Done commitments / Total commitments) × 100 |
| Decision Recency | 25% | < 14 days since last decision = 100, < 30 days = 60, else 20 |
Health labels:
- 75-100: Active (green), recent journal, decisions, and commitments
- 45-74: Coasting (amber), some activity but gaps
- 0-44: Stalled (red), no recent activity in any signal
A stalled project appears with a red health badge on the Projects page and may trigger recommendations on the Today page.
Project Journal
Each project has a journal, a chronological log of freeform text entries. Journal entries are the simplest object in Foundry: just a body and a timestamp.
What to journal:
- Progress updates ("Shipped the landing page")
- Blockers ("Waiting on API key from payment provider")
- Decisions that don't need the full Decision Log ("Going with Stripe over Paddle")
- Context you'll want to remember later ("User said the pricing felt too high")
Journal entries are not tasks. Don't use them as a to-do list. They're a chronological record of what happened, not what needs to happen.
Journal entries can be created, edited, and deleted from the project detail page. Recent journal activity is a key input to the project health score.
Limits & Plan Gating
| Plan | Limit | What Counts |
|---|---|---|
| ------ | ------- | ------------ |
| Free | 3 active top-level projects | Only ACTIVE status, only top-level (no parent) |
| Pro | Unlimited | No restrictions |
- PARKED, ARCHIVED, and COMPLETED projects don't count
- Sub-projects (with a parent) don't count
- Creating a project checks the limit, you can't create a 4th active project on Free
FAQ
No. Projects represent committed initiatives that deserve tracked attention. Quick experiments, one-off tasks, and exploratory work can live as ideas or journal entries within an existing project.
What's the difference between archiving and completing a project?
Completing requires reflection, you write about what you learned. Archiving is silent removal. Use complete for projects you finished; use archive for projects you're abandoning.
Can I change a project's parent after creation?
Yes. You can set or change the parent project at any time from the project settings.
How many projects should I have active?
Most operators find 2-4 active projects sustainable. Foundry defaults to a capacity limit of 3. The right number depends on the complexity of your projects and your available time.
Can I move ideas between projects?
Yes. Edit any idea and change its project assignment.
What happens to a project's ideas/decisions when I archive it?
Nothing, they remain associated with the project and are still accessible through the Vault and Decision Log. Archiving a project hides it from the default project view but doesn't affect its children.