How rollover works (and why it's the whole point)

Most todo apps have a quiet problem. When you don't finish a task, the app does something gentle on your behalf - it greys out the date, or stamps the task as “overdue” in red, or quietly hides it under a filter you can choose not to look at. Each of those choices feels kind in the moment. None of them help.

A task you didn't do yesterday is a small decision you haven't made. Hiding it postpones the decision. Greying it out postpones the decision and adds shame. The thing the task actually needs is for you to look at it and decide whether it still belongs on the list.

Rollover is the mechanic that forces that decision to happen. Kavro's whole product is built around it.

What rollover means in Kavro

When you open Kavro on a new day, any task you didn't complete on a previous day moves forward to today's column. Not into a hidden “overdue” bucket. Not stamped red. It's just on today, the same way any task you typed in this morning is on today, sitting next to the fresh tasks like an awkward guest at a dinner party - which is the point.

You see it. You can't pretend it isn't there. That's the whole feature.

When rollover happens

Three triggers, in order of how often they fire:

• You open Kavro for the first time today. Cold load - typical case. Rollover runs once as the planner mounts.
• You come back to a tab you left open. If you leave Kavro open in a browser tab overnight and switch back to it the next morning, rollover runs the moment the tab regains focus.
• The clock crosses midnight while you're looking.Rare, but it happens. A timer fires shortly after local midnight and runs the rollover so the view doesn't lie about what day it is.

You never trigger rollover manually. There's no “move yesterday's tasks” button - it's just done. The planner you open in the morning is the planner you should be looking at.

The roll-over rule

The mechanic does the moving. You still have to do the deciding. Here's the rule we keep coming back to:

For each rolled-over task, ask: “If this were a brand new task today, would I add it?”

If yes, leave it on today. If no, delete it. You'd be surprised how often the honest answer is no. A task that has rolled over four times is rarely a sign that you're lazy. It's usually a sign that the task wasn't as important as your Monday self thought - or that the world changed and it doesn't apply any more, or that someone else handled it, or that you've been carrying it as a guilty totem rather than as a real piece of work.

Deleting a stale task is not failure. Carrying it for six weeks while pretending you'll do it is.

The stuck-task warning

Some tasks genuinely keep rolling and you genuinely want them done. Kavro doesn't make you keep mental notes of which ones those are. When a task has been on your planner for three or more days without being completed, a small warning triangle appears next to it.

The marker isn't a punishment. It's a tap on the shoulder. The honest move when you see one is to ask the rule above - would you add this task today, fresh? - and then either commit and do it, schedule it onto a specific day, move it to a backlog list, or delete it. Anything but ignore it.

Completed tasks don't roll

Tasks you completed yesterday stay on yesterday. They're struck through, sitting on the day they were done. This is deliberate - the weekly view is partly a planner and partly a record of what actually happened. Moving completed work forward would lie about your week.

If you find yourself wishing completed tasks did roll forward, it usually means you're looking for a habit tracker rather than a planner. Different shape of problem - worth reading our piece on streaks before reaching for one.

What about a task with a specific future date?

Rollover only moves tasks whose date is in the past. Something you scheduled for next Thursday stays on next Thursday, regardless of what today is. The mechanic is asymmetric on purpose: forward planning is something you choose; rollover is something that just happens. Letting rollover touch future-dated tasks would tangle the two.

Why this matters

Almost every other todo app gives you a way to make undone tasks feel handled without actually doing them. Snooze, defer, remind me later, archive, hide-overdue, smart-list-that-only-shows-today. Each of those is a small piece of psychological relief at the cost of an honest relationship with your own list.

Visible rollover is the opposite trade. It's slightly uncomfortable. It puts the same task in your face on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday until you do something about it. The discomfort is the feature - it's the bit that stops your list from quietly bloating into a graveyard of intentions.

Open the planner tomorrow morning. Look at what rolled in. Be honest about each one. That's the whole loop.