A decentralized heterogenous project management & communication technology implemented by a Best of Breed Suite of open-source tools based on Stackspin. For background thoughts on the concept see Nodal.
Vision: Empower cross-disciplinary teams of diverse technical affinity to collaborate, each in the tool that fits their workflow.
What if… - the discussion thread on Discourse is also a topic in Zulip is also an issue thread on Forgejo is also a comment thread in Vikunja? - the task description in Vikunja is also a wiki entry is also a markdown file in Nextcloud (synced to your device for offline editing) is also a HedgeDoc document for collaborative editing and always available to export as a professional TeX PDF to update teams and customers? - the calendar entry is also a task is also a drop in the Gantt chart is also a Kanban card is also tracked in your time tracking?
Would that not be convenient?
Over and over again I see people building specialized, unnecessarily complex, artificially restricted often proprietary tools. We are wasting so much potential by not acting on these and many more possible connections.
We need simple, generic, reusable backends that do one thing well. Artificial restrictions and structures as often used in hierarchies for notes and tasks are only useful fur humans, neither for developers nor for the machine, so only the human interface should be concerned with them. This also empowers advanced users to break free from the restrictions and develop their own flow, without needing to switch gears.
Evidently, we need a single source of truth. We already have this concept in identity management and even design and project management to some extent, but not for application data. SOLID is an interesting project for this, but I think we need to go more low-level: Everything can be represented as a node in a graph database, with tags, taxonomies and hierarchies all represented through connections.
Each node has a state - a wiki entry is TODO when it is empty, a task on a Kanban board when it is not in the Done column, a calendar entry might need preparations as well as postprocessing. Depending on its context, a node might have different attributes - timestamps, description, and plenty of connections.
Emacs Org mode seems to be the only ecosystem so far able to model this: A heading can have arbitrary properties, link to other headings by id, contain a description and a freely definable state and has endless possibilities for integration through elisp. But we need tooling that is not only for geeks.
The working title Polygon has referred to various parts of the project in the past, so here is an overview: - nodal is the draft of the protocol that should drive this in the future, currently planned to be built on nostr - Stackspout is our extension of Stackspin to provide initial integration of various tools including Vikunja through existing tools and protocols (SCIM, n8n, LDAP) - Polygon refers to the canonical suite implementing an out-of-the box experience with various tools kept in sync by nodal
The USP of the nodal Polygon is ultimate flexibility and sustainability. It is not an application or another platform with its own extension ecosystem with a core rotting over time (like Nextcloud and most ERP tools). Because such a system inevitably ties the extensions to implementation details of the core and encourages the core to grow, resulting in growing switching costs and a single point of failure as cessation of core development breaks the whole ecosystem.
Instead the UNIX command line serves as a model. The beauty of combining multiple simple tools through piping into a powerful command is striking, and the flexibility is unparalleled. Any part of the pipe can be exchanged within seconds if appropriate. So it is time to bring this concept to multi-user server-client applications of the 21st century, allowing you to unite your favorite productivity, communication and more tools into one mighty Polygon without revolving around any single one of them, allowing you to replace or remove parts at your convenience.
The current landscape of task management and productivity tools is inadequate because they either lack good communication features or fall short in task management capabilities. This results in the use of multiple tools that are not synchronized, tools being used for unintended purposes, or compromises made with tools that can do a bit of everything. There is a need for a framework that addresses these limitations.
The new protocol, called Nodal, is built on top of the nostr protocol, which handles communication end-to-end using asymmetric key cryptography for identity verification. Nodal uses a graph structure of nodes as its foundation. It allows for the connection of various components without a central dependency.
The new protocol and interface aim to address the limitations of existing tools by providing a platform-agnostic approach and allowing for the integration of best-of-breed tools. The principles of the framework include being open-source, federated, offline-first with conflict resolution mechanisms, extensible, and immutable.
Polygon refers to the suite of tools implementing the Nodal protocol. The goal of Polygon is to empower cross-disciplinary teams to collaborate using tools that fit their workflow. The focus is on ultimate flexibility and sustainability, similar to the UNIX command line concept, where different tools can be combined and exchanged easily. The new interface built on top of Nodal can provide productivity tools for specific target groups. One example is task progress, where tasks are sliced into subtasks that can be completed in one day or a single work session. The completion of these subtasks can be used to display reliable progress bars and update GANTT charts dynamically.
There are challenges to overcome, such as creating a central navigation system for the different applications and ensuring consistent user logins and customer data across the ecosystem of applications. Options like OpenID Connect, LDAP, SCIM, or a messaging system for app synchronization are being considered for this purpose.
Overall, the Nodal framework and Polygon suite aim to provide a more comprehensive and integrated solution for task management and communication by addressing the limitations of existing tools and promoting interoperability between different productivity tools.
Listed below are the big design challenges to be overcome to make this concept really viable.
All the different apps run on different URLs, able to be used independently, which in itself is quite handy. But the novice user is often better off with a central navigation, like GSuite and Microsoft Online and the likes have.
Currently we mimick this with iframes within a custom nextcloud navigation. But unfortunately, iframes do not preserve state, so reloading the page or sharing a URL leads back to the root of the iframed app.
One approach would be if the dashboard had access to the iframed app, so it could forward the URL parameters.
How can we ensure consistent user logins and customer data across an ecosystem of different applications? OpenID Connect, LDAP, SCIM, or rather a messaging system for the apps to update each other? Each has its pros and cons.
With a single point of truth like LDAP, the services become dependent on the central database, and account changes become more complicated - Zammad for instance overwrites any changes done to accounts synced from LDAP.
With a messaging system, one can never sure both services are actually in sync, but it would fit the distributed nature better and allow to use any API rather than requiring a specific protocol.
Polygon GmbH
GF Janek Fischer
Bamberger Str. 43
96215 Lichtenfels