Flowcus, a macOS productivity app from indie developer Rhyd Lewis, takes a layered approach to task management by adding a lean-focused Kanban visualization surface on top of existing tools rather than competing with them. The app integrates with OmniFocus (Pro edition), Things 3, and TaskPaper, treating each as the authoritative data store while overlaying customizable Kanban columns, swimlanes, work-in-progress limits, and explicit blocking states with trackable reasons. Drag-and-drop movements sync back to whichever source system a task originated from, preserving the user's existing workflow investment. Additional features include Radar, which algorithmically surfaces priority tasks, and Ghost Detection, which flags neglected or vaguely defined work items.
Each of the three integrations works differently, which is a direct consequence of each platform's distinct API surface. For OmniFocus, Flowcus uses JXA (JavaScript for Automation), macOS's OSA-compliant JavaScript runtime, which replaced an earlier AppleScript path in v0.2.7. Things 3 integration, added March 2, 2026, relies on AppleScript for reads and the Things URL scheme update command for writes — requiring a user-supplied authentication token that Cultured Code gates intentionally to prevent silent third-party modifications. TaskPaper integration bypasses scripting entirely, reading and writing the plain .taskpaper file directly via macOS security-scoped bookmarks. Tasks from different source systems can coexist on a single board but remain siloed — Flowcus stores its own board metadata keyed to source-system task IDs without attempting cross-platform normalization.
The AI component, branded "Sidekick," is explicitly described as early-stage at launch, offering a limited initial set of task management actions with more planned. Lewis positions it as peripheral to the product's current value proposition, which centers on lean visualization principles rather than AI capability. The full three-source board capability is less than five weeks old as of publication, with the Tauri-based rewrite enabling TaskPaper support arriving February 14, 2026 and OmniFocus subtask interactivity landing March 10, 2026. The app targets Apple Silicon exclusively on macOS 13 Ventura or later. For Sidekick to become genuinely useful, it would need to move beyond task management actions and into board-aware reasoning — surfacing the right blocked task at the right moment, or flagging when WIP limits are being gamed rather than respected.