Goals & progress

Goals are the high-level objectives a project is working toward. Where tasks are the individual pieces of work on the board, goals are the outcomes those tasks add up to - and they give you, the admin, a way to see how far along a project is and where things stand without micromanaging the board.

A goal is an outcome or milestone you want the project to achieve - a state of the world you care about: a level to reach ("reach 100 active customers"), or a level to reach and hold ("keep the error rate under 1%"). Its measurement judges results, never activity - "monitor the watchlist daily" or "deliver a weekly report" is not a goal but recurring operational work, which the team runs as a task that stays open (see the callout below). A one-off deliverable with a fixed done state - a document to produce, a feature to ship, a one-time analysis - belongs on the board as a task too (the Captain can link it to a goal). Goals are re-checked on their cadence until you archive them, so a reached milestone stays tracked (and held) rather than quietly slipping.

You set the goals; the Captain keeps them up to date. You don't have to remember to update a status or move a slider - the Captain re-checks each goal on a schedule and writes a fresh estimate, so the Progress page is always a current read on the project.

The Captain (or the CEO) can also suggest goals - but goals start with you. During a project's initial onboarding the Captain asks what you want the project to achieve and formulates suggestions from your answers; it shouldn't invent goals you didn't ask for. A suggestion isn't a goal yet: it appears as an Approve / Deny card on the task thread and on the Progress page, and only becomes a real goal once you approve it. Deny it and it's dismissed. You stay in control of which goals the team actually tracks.

There is no cron in Hezo - and goals aren't one either. Hezo has no cron or timed-trigger system to configure; repeating work runs on the heartbeat: agents wake on their own cadence and revisit the open tasks assigned to them. Recurring operational work - a daily monitoring sweep, a weekly report - is a standing task: an ordinary task that stays open and is never marked done, with each round filed as a sub-task under it (see Recurring work and standing tasks). Goals are different: they track the outcomes you want - on each due check the Captain assesses progress and turns the assessment into steering (a comment on an in-flight task) or new tasks. A goal's check frequency schedules the Captain's re-assessment, not the work itself.

The Progress page

Open Progress in the project menu (just under Inbox). Top to bottom it shows:

a project progress summary the Captain keeps current - a short blurb of what's done, what's in progress, and what's still to do. It opens collapsed (showing the Captain's headline points); expand it for the full narrative, which may link a few key tasks.
your goals, each as a panel showing its progress, health, and latest status. Click a panel to open the goal's own page, where its full progress chart and history live.
the recent progress update runs for the project, with a Run now button to trigger one on demand.

Setting a goal

From the Progress page choose Create Goal (or the + button in the Goals header). A goal has:

Goal name - the objective in a line (e.g. "Reach 100 active customers").
Measurement - the precise definition of how you'll know the goal is achieved (e.g. "100 active paid subscriptions in Stripe"). This is the bar the Captain measures against, so the more concrete it is, the more honest its progress estimates.
Suggested actions (optional) - guidance on what the Captain should do or check when it assesses the goal (e.g. "read the signup-funnel numbers, not just the task board"). Leave it blank to let the Captain decide.
Deadline (optional) - when the goal should be met. The Captain weighs progress against this date when it sets the goal's health, and once the deadline has passed an unmet goal is checked on every heartbeat, regardless of its check frequency, until it reaches 100% or is archived. At 100% the goal drops back to its normal check frequency (and the every-heartbeat urgency returns if its progress later slips below 100 again).
Check frequency - how often the Captain re-assesses the goal: daily (the default), weekly, or monthly. This schedules the Captain's assessment, not the team's work - pick it by how often the measurement meaningfully changes: daily for fast-moving measurements, monthly for slow-moving outcomes.

The create and edit forms keep the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) in front of you as a reminder. A project can have any number of goals; until you've set one, a gentle dot pulses next to Progress in the menu as a nudge to create your first. Editing a goal (from the goal's own page or the panel's edit control) reopens the same form.

How the Captain tracks progress

On the Captain's heartbeat, it looks at which goals are due for a check and runs a single progress update covering all of them at once. A goal is due when its check frequency has come round (last checked longer ago than its cadence, or never checked) or once its deadline has passed - a goal past its deadline is always checked and never skipped while it stays active. Goals that aren't due on either count are skipped. For each due goal the Captain assesses real progress toward the outcome - reading the relevant tasks, comments, and project state rather than just counting finished tasks - and records three things:

a progress percentage (0-100) - its honest estimate of how far along the goal is,
a health - a coloured pill that reads at a glance: on track (green), at risk (amber), or off track (red); a brand-new goal shows not assessed (grey) until its first check,
a status blurb - a short paragraph on where the goal stands and what's needed next. Any tasks or pull requests it references become links you can click straight through to.

Because each check is recorded, every goal shows a progress chart of how its percentage has moved over time, so you can see momentum (or a stall) at a glance.

These progress updates are not done inside a task - they're standalone Captain runs. The recent progress update runs for the whole project appear at the bottom of the Progress page. Each goal's own page also has a Progress update runs section showing just the runs that did something for that goal - the progress it set and any tasks it created or commented on toward the goal show inline, and each run expands to reveal the status summary it recorded.

You don't have to wait for the schedule: the Run now button next to Progress update runs on the Progress page triggers a progress update immediately. It runs the same check the heartbeat would - assessing whichever goals are currently due - so if nothing is due yet it simply reports that.

If the Captain is already busy when you press Run now, the progress update is queued instead of failing - it starts automatically as soon as the Captain is free. A queued run shows up as a "Queued - waiting for the Captain to finish" row in the Progress update runs section, and you can cancel it from there while it's still waiting.

During the same run the Captain also refreshes the project progress summary shown at the top of the Progress page, so that headline stays in step with the goal estimates.

Goals aren't finished at 100%

Reaching 100% doesn't end tracking. A goal that hits 100% stays in rotation and keeps being re-assessed on its check frequency, because progress can move back below 100: a goal like "reach 100 active customers" is met one week and slips to 95 the next when customers churn. When that happens the Captain lowers the percentage (explaining why in the blurb) and the progress chart shows the dip.

That also means goals can be deliberately never-ending - a standing objective like "keep the error rate under 1%" or "respond to every support ticket within a day" is measured continuously, forever, and simply hovers around 100% while it's being met. The only way to stop the Captain checking a goal is to archive it (below) - do that when a goal has served its purpose and is no longer worth tracking.

Archiving

The Progress page defaults to an Active view and has an Archived filter to see the rest. Archiving a goal (from the archive button on its card, or the same button on the goal's own page) sets it aside without deleting it: an archived goal is no longer checked - the Captain skips it entirely and never updates its status or files work for it.

Because that quietly retires something the team is working toward, archiving asks you to confirm first, naming the goal in the prompt so you can tell it apart from the card next to it. Nothing is sent until you confirm. Unarchiving needs no confirmation - it is the undo of that action - and brings the goal straight back into rotation.

Goals and the board

When the Captain decides a goal needs a push, it either comments on an existing in-flight task to steer or unblock it, or files new tasks through the normal delegation flow and links them to the goal. But it doesn't create work for its own sake: if tasks already in the backlog or in flight will advance the goal, the Captain leaves the board alone. The point of a progress update is to judge whether the project is on course - not to manufacture busywork every time a goal comes due. The Captain never re-opens a closed task; if something needs redoing it files a fresh task that points back at the original.

The estimate is exactly that - an estimate, made by the Captain. Treat the blurb as the primary signal and the percentage as a quick gauge of direction. Together they let you glance at a project and know where it's headed without reading every task.

Goals are a per-project concept. The global HQ project does not have goals.