Tasks & calendar · checked 2026-10-19Can I vibecode Motion?
KINDA· weekend project
A personal auto-scheduler is a small algorithm: take tasks with durations and deadlines, subtract busy time from your calendar, fill the gaps, and redo it when something moves. An agent builds that against CalDAV or iCal feeds in a weekend, with tests for deadlines and daylight-saving days. The cost is in the rest of the product: two-way Google and Outlook sync that never double-books, phone and desktop apps, meeting notes, AI chat over your work, and the team views. A local version plans your week well but lives in a browser tab.
$49/moprice per seat
$588you'd save a year
weekendbuild time
—people replaced it
What you need on hand.
DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.
TimeA weekend; calendar access is the slow part
- Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
- Node.js 22better-sqlite3 compiles a native module, so build tools must be installed.
- A way to read your calendarA CalDAV app password (iCloud, Fastmail, Nextcloud) or a secret iCal address from Google or Outlook.
- A public address (optional)Only needed if Google Calendar should subscribe to your planned blocks; a tunnel or small VPS.
Before you buildMotion has no free plan, only a trial. For simple needs, Reclaim's free Lite plan or a timeboxing to-do app may cover a lot of it.
- 1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- 2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
- 3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.
The prompt
Build me a personal auto-scheduling task planner to replace Motion. Requirements: - Node.js 22 + TypeScript: a Fastify API and a React UI built with Vite and FullCalendar (`@fullcalendar/react`). `npm start` serves http://localhost:4900. - Storage: better-sqlite3 in ./data/planner.db: tasks (title, minutes, deadline, priority 1 to 4, earliest start, can-split flag with a minimum chunk), projects, working-hour windows per weekday, and placed blocks (task, start, end, locked). - Calendar in: busy times from CalDAV (`tsdav`; CALDAV_URL, CALDAV_USER, CALDAV_PASSWORD in .env) and from secret iCal feed URLs (ICAL_URLS in .env, which reads Google Calendar without OAuth). - Calendar out: serve the blocks as a subscribable feed at /planner.ics behind a token in the URL, and when CalDAV is set, also write them to a calendar named Planner. Never edit existing events. - Scheduler (pure functions with `luxon`, the owner's IANA timezone): order by deadline, then priority; fill free gaps inside working hours; split a task only when allowed; keep a 10-minute buffer; never place a block after its deadline. When nothing fits, mark the task at risk and say how many minutes it misses the deadline by. - Re-plan: a button and a poll every 5 minutes; keep locked blocks, drop and re-place the others, and log every move. - UI: a week view with busy events in grey and task blocks in colour, drag a block to lock it, a task list with quick add such as "write report 90m by Fri p2" (`chrono-node`), and an at-risk list. - Tests (Vitest): splitting, buffers, deadline overflow, two daylight-saving days, an all-day event. - Single user. No accounts, no telemetry, local-first. Outbound calls: your calendar servers only. - Out of scope: Google or Outlook OAuth, booking pages, team capacity, AI chat, mobile apps, recurring tasks. - README: the .env keys, where to find a secret iCal address, a warning that Google refreshes subscribed feeds slowly (hours), and how to back up ./data.
Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.
Then keep going
Next prompts, same folder.
The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Motion.
Add habits to the planner in this folder. Requirements: - A habit has a title, minutes, days of the week, a preferred time window and a priority above all tasks. - Place habits first each re-plan, then fit tasks around them; if a habit can't fit on a day, skip it and record it as missed. - Show habits in the week view in their own colour and list the missed ones. - Tests for a habit that collides with a meeting and one that lands on a daylight-saving day. - Update the README.
Add time tracking to the planner in this folder. Requirements: - Start and stop a timer on any block; store the actual minutes with the task. - For each project, compute the median ratio of actual to estimated minutes over the last 20 finished tasks, and show it next to the estimate field. - A setting that applies the ratio automatically to new estimates, with the original kept. - Update the README.
Add a Google Calendar provider to the planner in this folder. Requirements: - Use `googleapis` with OAuth offline access; read busy times from chosen calendars and write blocks to a calendar named Planner. - Put it behind the existing calendar interface next to the CalDAV provider. - Store tokens in ./data, never in the repo, and show a reconnect button when a token fails. - README: a warning that a Google Cloud project in Testing status issues refresh tokens that expire after 7 days.
Add a daily digest to the planner in this folder. Requirements: - At 07:30 in the owner's timezone, send an email through SMTP settings from .env listing today's blocks in order and any task that is at risk this week. - A command `planner digest --dry-run` that prints it instead of sending. - Skip the email on days with no blocks. - Update the README.
What you lose
- Two-way sync that writes blocks straight into Google or Outlook calendars
- The mobile and desktop apps with notifications
- AI chat, the AI notetaker and the AI task planner and writer
- Booking links and meeting scheduling
- Team capacity planning, Gantt charts, time tracking and permissions
- Docs, wiki and notes next to your tasks
Why people still pay
People with a calendar full of changing meetings pay to stop re-planning their day by hand: Motion moves tasks around every change, across calendars and a phone, and warns when a deadline is slipping. The planner is the point, but the apps, integrations and AI around it are why it feels finished.
Motion or your own copy?
Seats
Over
Your usage
12h ×$/h
Motion, 1 yr$588
Your own copy, 1 yr$44running + build session
You keep$545pays for itself in the first month
Estimate · Runs on your machine; add a $5 VPS only if you want the feed reachable all day. No AI calls are needed for the scheduler. The build is token usage on your agent plan.
Take your data, then cancel.
1 · Take your data out of Motion
- 1The help index we read has no article on exporting tasks, projects or notes: no CSV or calendar export was found.
- 2Meetings and events that Motion synced from Google or Outlook stay in those calendars.
- 3Tasks, projects, docs and notes live only in Motion: copy them out by hand, or email support@usemotion.com to ask whether an export is possible.
- 4Look through the app's settings for an export option the help pages don't mention before you decide to copy by hand.
2 · Cancel Motion
- 1Individual plan: sign in at app.usemotion.com on a computer, open settings (the gear icon), choose Manage Plan, then Cancel Plan.
- 2Continue, enter a reason and confirm with Cancel Subscription.
- 3Team plan: only team admins can cancel, under Settings > Billing > Manage Plan > Cancel Plan.
- 4Subscribed through the iPhone app? Cancel in iPhone Settings > your name > Subscriptions > Motion.
- Cancelling doesn't trigger a refund: purchases are non-refundable, though Motion may refund at its discretion.
- The cancel page doesn't say when access ends or what happens to your data afterwards, so ask support if you need to know.
- To come back, sign in with the same email; a different email creates a new account without the old data.
- Remove Motion's blocks from your calendars before you cancel, so stale placeholders don't stay behind.
The escape hatch
Don't feel like building it? These are already free.
Super ProductivityOpen sourceMIT to-do app with timeboxing and time tracking and links to Jira, GitLab and GitHub; data stays local, but it doesn't place tasks into your calendar for you.★ 23k · active Oct 2026 · one-click install
Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, AndroidVisit ↗VikunjaOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 self-hosted task manager with lists, Kanban, Gantt and table views and CalDAV; no automatic scheduling.★ 5.8k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗Reclaim LiteFreeReclaim's free plan: smart scheduling of focus time and habits for one user with one calendar sync and a one-week planning range; paid plans start at $12 a month.they host it
WebVisit ↗
Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, AndroidVisit ↗VikunjaOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 self-hosted task manager with lists, Kanban, Gantt and table views and CalDAV; no automatic scheduling.★ 5.8k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗Reclaim LiteFreeReclaim's free plan: smart scheduling of focus time and habits for one user with one calendar sync and a one-week planning range; paid plans start at $12 a month.they host it
WebVisit ↗
The numbers
Motion pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro AI (Individuals) | $49 | $29 | AI chat, projects and tasks, AI calendar and meetings, docs, wiki and notes, AI task planner, AI writer, unlimited storage, iOS, Android and desktop apps, integrations, 7,500 AI credits per seat a month. |
| Business AI (Individuals) | $69 | $39 | Everything in Pro AI plus team capacity planning, advanced dashboards and reports, timeline and Gantt charts, time tracking, permissions, central billing, priority support, 15,000 credits a month. |
| Pro AI (Teams) | $29 | $19 | Same features and 7,500 credits per seat as Pro AI, bought as a team workspace. |
| Business AI (Teams) | $49 | $29 | Same features as Business AI above, bought as a team workspace. |
- Free tier
- No free plan; the pricing page offers a free trial but doesn't state how long it lasts.
- Billing
- Per seat, monthly or annual. The Individuals tab shows $49 monthly or $29 a month billed annually for Pro AI; the Teams tab shows $29 or $19. Each workspace has its own subscription. Purchases are non-refundable by the help center, though Motion may refund at its discretion.
- Hidden costs
- Each seat includes a monthly pool of AI credits (7,500 on Pro AI, 15,000 on Business AI); more cost 25 cents per 100 on Pro AI and 19 cents per 100 on Business AI. The pages read don't say what each credit buys.
- Source
- www.usemotion.com
Also on the list
Related apps
Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Two-way sync that writes blocks straight into Google or Outlook calendars, The mobile and desktop apps with notifications.
About $49 a month on the Pro AI (Individuals) plan per seat, $588 a year (checked 2026-10-19).
Two-way sync that writes blocks straight into Google or Outlook calendars; The mobile and desktop apps with notifications; AI chat, the AI notetaker and the AI task planner and writer; Booking links and meeting scheduling; Team capacity planning, Gantt charts, time tracking and permissions; Docs, wiki and notes next to your tasks. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.
Yes: Super Productivity (open source), Vikunja (open source), Reclaim Lite (free).