Why I Built Heliostat
Shape Up is the project management methodology Basecamp introduced to the world: fixed time, variable scope, and a strong bias toward shipping. I fell for it immediately, but every tool and every bit of the ceremony assumed a team. There is a shaper, a betting table, a group of people building. As a solo developer, I loved the ideas and had nowhere to actually run them. So I built Heliostat, Shape Up for an audience of one.
Fixed Time, Variable Scope
The core bet of Shape Up is that you fix the time and flex the scope. You give a project an appetite, say two weeks or six weeks, and then you cut scope to fit that budget rather than letting the work sprawl. Heliostat makes that appetite a first-class part of every pitch, so the question is never how long something will take but what is worth doing inside the time you are willing to spend.
The Five Phases
Heliostat organizes work into five phases that keep projects bounded and learning compounding:
- Pitch: shape a problem and a rough solution with a clear appetite.
- Commit: decide what makes it into the cycle.
- Build: do the work, cutting scope as you learn.
- Cool-down: rest, fix small things, and capture ideas for later.
- Reflect: look back honestly at what happened and why.
Honest Check-ins with Hill Charts
The feature I lean on most is the hill chart. Instead of a percentage that always seems stuck at 90 percent, the hill chart asks a more honest question: are you still figuring this out, or do you now know how to finish it. Work climbs the uphill side while it is uncertain and rolls down the downhill side once the unknowns are gone. Daily check-ins move each scope along the hill, which makes stalled work obvious instead of hiding it behind an optimistic number.
Heliostat also tracks interruptions honestly. When unplanned work pulls you off a cycle, you record it rather than pretending it did not happen, so your reflections are grounded in what really occurred.
An MCP Server for AI Assistants
Heliostat ships with a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. That means AI assistants can manage your pitches, scopes, and daily check-ins on your behalf. I can ask an assistant to log today's hill-chart movement, capture a cool-down idea, or open a new pitch, and it talks directly to Heliostat through the MCP tools. All writes are scoped to your own account, so the assistant can only ever touch your data.
This turns the methodology into something you can drive by conversation, which fits how I actually work day to day.
The Tech Stack
Heliostat is built on Ruby on Rails 8 with Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) for the interface and Tailwind CSS for styling. PostgreSQL stores the data, Redis and Sidekiq handle background jobs, and dry-rb keeps the domain logic clean and explicit. Authentication runs through GitHub OAuth, so there is no new password to manage.
Try It
If you are a solo developer who admires Shape Up but has never had a good way to practice it, Heliostat is for you. Head to heliostat.dev, sign in with GitHub, and write your first pitch. Give it an appetite, commit it to a cycle, and start moving it up the hill.