Ask HN: Are you using a Pivotal Tracker successor? Which one?

izajahmad · 2026-03-20T23:16:49.000Z 1774048609

Linear for anything engineering-focused. The keyboard shortcuts and speed make a real difference when you're context-switching constantly.

For smaller projects I've gone back to a simple GitHub Projects board — sometimes the overhead of dedicated PM tools isn't worth it when the team is under 5 people.

prxtl · 2026-03-21T14:02:22.000Z 1774101742

+1 to Linear being fantastic. At this point, my biggest gripe with it (in comparison to Pivotal Tracker) is that I cannot put a limit on how many issues can exist in a certain state. Tracker used to do this very well with velocity.

I'd be very happy if I could set a max limit of 5 on the "todo" state of a certain team. Helps a lot with prioritization and poorly done planning.

muzani · 2026-03-20T23:57:31.000Z 1774051051

I just ended up making my own highly opinionated tool, based on my workflow, but it's designed for 1 developer/owner. It exports into markdown for easy communication to AI agents. https://mandate.run

Since the future is AI agents, I'm thinking this works better than trying to retrofit an existing flow. I can just plug it into a MCP or something later to delegate the tasks to AI and track.

I feel like the problem with a lot of paid tools is that the money is in medium sized teams (~30 or so people). Solo types like Workflowy and Pivotal Tracker aren't very profitable and there's a strong pull to enshittification.