Run a real project end to end

By the end of this page you will have a small project that hangs together: a brief you can read, a plan that tracks the actual work, and a way to jump between them without keeping two copies. The point is not any one of those pieces. It is the way they connect, so the project stays current as a by-product of doing the work, not as a chore on top of it.

This is the escalation ladder in Undra. You start at the lowest-friction surface, a note, and you only move up a rung when the work demands it. Nothing gets copied between rungs, so there is never a second version to keep in sync.

Step 1: Capture in a note

Start in a note. A note is the cheapest place to think, so it is where a project should begin: a paragraph of context, a few half-formed tasks as - [ ] lines, whatever is in your head right now. Do not try to structure it. The whole reason to start here is that you do not have to.

Why a note first: most of what you capture never becomes tracked work, and forcing structure up front is wasted effort. Capturing in a note keeps the cost of writing something down near zero, and a note can always grow up later.

Step 2: Promote it to a plan when it becomes work

At some point the note stops being thinking and starts being work: there are tasks with an order, some have due dates, some depend on others. That is the signal to move up a rung to a plan, where each task carries real structure (a status, a due date, a label) and the same tasks flow through list, board, and calendar views.

Why promote rather than rewrite: a checklist in a note has no status, no due date, and no ordering you can sort on. A plan gives the work those handles, so you can sequence it and see what is due, which is exactly what you could not do while it was still loose text.

Step 3: Link tasks back to the brief

Now you have two things: the original writing (the context, the why, the decisions) and the plan (the tasks). Keep them connected. Wikilink from a task description back to the brief with [[Project brief]], so anyone working the task can jump straight to the context it came from.

The glue is a wikilink. This link is one-way: click it from the task to land on the brief, but the brief itself does not track which plans or tasks reference it, since only notes are indexed for backlinks and the graph. So the plan reaches the context, not the other way around. Individual tasks can wikilink out too, so a task points straight at the spec or meeting note it came from.

Why bother linking instead of pasting: pasting the brief into the plan would create a copy that drifts the moment you edit either side. A wikilink keeps one source of truth and connects to it. If you want the brief to actually render inside another item, an embed (![[Project brief]]) shows it live and still editable, rather than a stale paste. Both forms are covered in Wikilinks & Backlinks.

Step 4: Keep the project findable

The last rung is not a separate status board. Pin the plan (or the brief) so it stays one click away, open the plan’s calendar or board when you need due dates or flow, and use Ctrl+K when you want to jump without hunting the sidebar. If the project needs a spatial map of notes and plans together, put them on a canvas.

Why the ladder works

You climbed from a throwaway note to tracked work with linked context, and at no point did you maintain two copies of anything. Capture stayed cheap because it started in a note. The work got real handles when it became a plan. The context stayed attached through a wikilink. That is the whole model: start low, escalate only when the work demands it, and connect rather than duplicate.

Where to go next

• Plans: the full anatomy of tasks, views, and detail notes.
• Canvas: arrange related items in space when a list is not enough.
• Wikilinks & Backlinks: the two-way links and embeds that hold it all together.