Time

Nothing in makermap carries its own private dates. There is no due_date column on a task and no start/end on a milestone. Time is a layer: every dated thing has a span in one canonical place, and the rest of the product reads through it.

Why that matters to you

Because it is the only arrangement in which "the plan versus what actually happened" is a question with an answer. A span records what was planned and what occurred, so:

• an overdue item can turn critical and say why, instead of just sitting there;
• moving a milestone moves what hung off it, because the dependency is an edge in the same layer;
• a date is never duplicated, so it can never drift between two copies.

What lives on the timeline

• Initiatives - the large change you are betting will move a product. The container between a product and its tasks: an intended outcome, tied to the epics and the gate that carry it.
• Milestones - checkpoints worth naming.
• Releases - which publish only when their launch gate passes, and record the moment they shipped as a fact rather than an edit.
• Tasks and epics - when they are dated. Most are not, and that is fine.

Capture first, formalize later

Not every thought arrives knowing what it is. Quick capture drops a block onto the timeline in about five seconds; later you turn that same block into a task, an epic, a milestone or an initiative, and its origin is preserved. Nothing is lost between "I should look at this in March" and knowing which of those four it turned out to be.