One queue. One current task.

The order should do the deciding

Most task systems are excellent at remembering work. The harder moment comes later, when a screen full of remembered work asks you to compare everything again before you can begin. Mellavi starts from the opposite end of that problem: the useful output of organizing is not a complete view, but a credible answer to “what should I do now?”

A new installation begins with Work and Personal. These categories are not miniature projects with their own dashboards and status machinery. They are simply boundaries between contexts that need different orders. More categories can be added, but only when a body of work genuinely needs its own queue.

Within each category, position carries the decision. The first task is visually stronger because it is current; moving another task ahead of it changes the queue itself rather than adding a second priority signal to interpret. Later tasks remain available, but they do not compete as equals every time the board opens.

The board can read left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Transposing it changes the spatial arrangement—rows become fixed columns and horizontal queues become vertical ones—without changing the underlying order or the meaning of the first position.

The first task is not one priority signal among many. It is the current answer.

Then the organizing surface gets out of the way

The board is useful while work is being captured, inspected, and reordered. It becomes noise once the decision has been made. Pressing F opens the first task of the active category in a full-screen execution view, regardless of which later task happened to be selected for board management. Categories, themes, counters, and editing controls disappear; the current task becomes the whole surface.

If that task needs decomposition, it can hold a single top-to-bottom queue of subtasks. There is no second layer of children and no branching project tree. The intent is to expose the next physical piece of work without turning execution mode into another planning environment.

Exiting focus mode restores the exact board or details context that opened it. That separation matters: you can inspect or reorganize future work without quietly redefining what “current” means, and you can step into execution without losing your place in management.

Fast should not mean brittle

Mellavi is designed to stay under the keyboard because the repeated path should be direct: capture, navigate, reorder, open, finish. Spatial shortcuts follow the visible layout, and the same movement logic applies whether tasks run across a row or down a column.

But speed is not permission to make accidents permanent. Completion and deletion ask for confirmation, including bulk actions. Additions, edits, moves, completion, and deletion participate in undo and redo. Completing a task moves it to Archive instead of erasing it. When a parent still has unfinished subtasks, Mellavi warns you and preserves only the steps you actually completed in its archived view.

The result is deliberately smaller than a project-management system. Mellavi keeps the backlog, preserves its order, and makes changes recoverable. Its real job is to make the transition from deciding to doing feel almost uneventful.