Nothing here is hard-coded. Not the pages, not the words, not the numbers.
The five pages before this one aren't five products — they're five different answers the same workspace gave to five different sets of questions. A quiz bowl team, a cultural association, a robotics lab, a debate union and a campus radio station all get their own answer too, assembled the same way: eleven pages you switch on and off, twelve words you rename, seats you invent, and the measures your org is actually judged on.
Five things that are yours, and the moment each one is easiest to set
None of these is a settings page nobody opens — each one changes what a member sees on the first screen they ever load. They're listed in the order you'll reach them.
In the interview
The pages, chosen by what you actually do
The interview asks what happens in a normal month rather than what category you are. Name travel, dues, a weekly meeting or a build night and those pages turn on; anything you don't name stays off. That's how one org ends up with six pages in the sidebar and another with eleven.
Before you invite anyone
The words your org already uses
Twelve words carry your vocabulary instead of ours — member, term, meeting, event, attendance, treasury, dues, role, admin, service, announcement, doc. You store the singular and plurals are derived, so Debater becomes Debaters on every screen without a second field to fill in.
Day one
Seats your constitution already names
A seat is a title, a color, a rank and any subset of fourteen abilities. Quartermaster, Novice Master, Race Director, Station Manager — invent it, tick what it can do, and rank it. Rank is the delegation rule: an officer can only grant roles ranked strictly below their own.
Week one
The number your org is judged on
Four built-in measures — attendance, GPA, dues, service hours — each carry a goal and an at-risk line you set. Past those, define your own: a name, a unit, a goal, an at-risk cutoff, and whether the headline is an average, a total, or a count of who's on track. It lands in the dashboard's measure strip like a built-in.
Any time after
Second thoughts, which are free
Every line above lives in Settings behind an org-admin gate: pages, the widgets inside them, sidebar order, words, seats, member fields, measures, thresholds, categories and terms. Turning a page off only hides it — its transactions, docs and records are kept and come back unchanged when you turn it on.
What a from-scratch org starts as
Tell the interview you're another kind of org and you get the smallest template in the product: six pages, one seat, our words. It's a floor rather than a guess — every row below is editable on the sheet before anything is built, and again in Settings for as long as the org exists.
The interview builds it, not a dropdown
Seven templates exist, and which one you land on matters far less than what you answered. An activity you didn't name leaves its page off even when the template would have seeded it — otherwise the interview is theatre over a preset.
A word your members don't use is a tool they don't trust
Vocabulary is one map read by every nav label and heading, so Member → Sister, Player, Debater or Volunteer changes the whole interface in one edit. No half-renamed screens, and no plural typed twice.
Your number is first-class, not a spreadsheet column
A measure you define carries a goal and an at-risk line, so it computes an on-track count and gets its own card and drawer on the dashboard — the same treatment attendance gets. That's the difference between tracking something and writing it down.
Pages
Six on, because a template with no assumptions shouldn't make five. Name tournaments, dues or a weekly assembly in the interview and those pages arrive switched on — your answers own this list, not the template. Dashboard and Timeline are the only two that can never be turned off.
Twelve words you can rename
Four of the twelve, filled in the way a debate union would. The rest cover Attendance, Treasury, Dues, Role, Admin, Service, Announcement and Doc — one sparse map, read by every nav label and page heading, so a rename lands everywhere at once.
Seats you invent
Only the first is seeded; the other two are invented, and so is every seat after them. Ranks are yours to assign, and they're what stops a chair promoting themselves — the constraint lives in the server, not in a norm.
Columns you add to a member
Custom member fields carry a label, a type and a choice about whether they show on the roster. Worth reading what not to put in one before you add the fourth.
Numbers tracked per member
The four built-ins are on or off per org, each with your own goal and at-risk line. A measure of your own adds a name, a unit, a goal, an at-risk cutoff and an aggregation — average per member, org total, or how many are on track.
Timeline categories
The two this template seeds. They're editable rows rather than built-ins — rename them to Tournament and Practice round, recolor them, reorder them, or delete both.
How your calendar resets
Semesters · Quarters · Seasons · Year-round
Every line is editable on this sheet before anything is built — and again in Settings next term, when the org has changed its mind.
Do these five things, in this order.
Each one is cheap now and expensive later — that's the whole reason they're in this order.
Answer the interview about your month, not your category
/create runs signed out. Describe what actually happens — we travel twice a term, we charge dues, we run a build night. The page list follows those answers, which is how you get a short sidebar instead of a full one.
Rename the nouns before a single person joins
Members read the vocabulary on their first screen, and a tool that calls them the wrong thing gets treated like one. It takes a minute now and it's free forever.
Build the seats, then hand them out
Create the offices your constitution already names, tick what each can do, and rank the ones with real authority above the ones without. Then assign them — seats are roles, so next year's turnover is a reassignment, not a migration.
Define your one number in week one
Every org has one: hours, tournaments, shifts, rehearsals, builds, points. Set the goal and the at-risk line while nobody is failing them yet, and the standing it produces will never look political.
Come back at the end of the term and cut
The page nobody opened, the field nobody filled, the measure that measured nothing. This is the step everyone skips, and turning a page off keeps everything underneath it — so there's nothing to lose by trying.
Three questions an org like yours actually types.
The assistant reads your real records and cites the rows it used. It drafts changes; a person with the right seat is what makes one happen.
Ask Chapt ⌘K
who holds the tournament director seat right now?
Reads the current role assignments rather than a title someone typed once.
Ask Chapt ⌘K
what's on the calendar in the next two weeks?
Reads the timeline, in your categories and your words for them.
Ask Chapt ⌘K
how do I add a measure for tournament wins?
It answers product questions about your own setup, and names the page to do it on.
Every draft is checked against your own seat before you see it. Without the permission the card is blocked rather than routed onward — and it names who does hold that authority.
What it won't do for you.
The section worth reading twice. Everything below is a real limit today, not a roadmap item dressed up as one — you should find this out here rather than in week three.
You can shape the eleven pages, not invent a twelfth
Every page can be renamed, reordered, switched off, or trimmed section by section. What you can't do is add a brand-new surface with its own data model — if what you run genuinely needs one, tell us; it's the request we most want.
Words change; structure doesn't
Renaming Member to Debater changes every label, not what a member row holds. A custom field is likewise a column on a person rather than a new object with a page of its own.
Customization is per-org
Each org is its own workspace with its own settings. There's no master template you push to a dozen chapters at once, and no view that spans them.
Not sure this fits your org?
Describe what you run in a normal month and we'll tell you plainly whether this is the right tool — including when it isn't. One person reads these, and they'd rather say no early.