13 templates
Gantt & critical path templates
Project schedules COMPUTED from durations, dependencies and a working calendar — never placed by hand. Forward and backward pass for the critical path, total and free float drawn as a whisker on every bar, all four precedence relationships (FS, SS, FF, SF) with lead and lag, calendar-day durations for waiting periods, resources and over-allocation, baselines and deadlines. Every date written in the document is treated as a claim and checked against the computation: a stated start that its own predecessors contradict, a missed deadline, one person booked on two overlapping tasks, and a dependency loop that has no schedule at all. `view network` draws the same schedule as an activity-on-node precedence network instead of bars — one document, two views, one computation, so they cannot disagree.
Software Launch — Critical Path, Float and Resources
The reference plan, reported clean. Four teams, a working calendar with two public holidays, a milestone, a board deadline and a today marker. Every bar is derived from the durations and dependencies — nothing here is placed by hand — and the trailing whisker on each bar is its total float, which is the number no other text-driven Gantt tool can show you.
Project & PlanningAll Four Dependencies — FS, SS, FF and SF, With Lead and Lag
Every precedence relationship in one plan, which Mermaid cannot express at all: finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish, each with a lag or a lead. `+10cd` is ten ELAPSED days — concrete does not stop curing on a Saturday — and the engine converts that to working days from wherever the predecessor actually lands. Reports clean.
Project & PlanningTeaching Case — Why "Just Shorten the Critical Task" Is False
Two chains of exactly equal length run in parallel, so BOTH are critical and every task on them has zero float. Take a week off one of them and the finish date does not move, because the other still holds it. This is the single most expensive misreading of a critical path, and no tool that draws bars without computing them can even show you that it applies.
Project & PlanningTeaching Case — A Start Date That Contradicts Its Own Plan
The defect this engine was built to catch, and it is invisible in every tool that draws what it is told. `cut` states it must start on 15 September; its own predecessors do not release it until the 29th — ten working days later. Both sentences are in the same document, both look entirely reasonable, and the drawing of the wrong one is identical to the drawing of the right one. The engine names the contradiction and counts the days.
Project & PlanningTeaching Case — A Plan That Cannot Be Scheduled At All
Draft waits for review, review waits for rework, rework waits for draft. That is a loop, it has no schedule — there is no first task — and Mermaid will draw it anyway, in colour, with dates. Here nothing is drawn on a time axis at all, because no date exists to draw, and the engine names the loop in the order you trace it.
Project & PlanningTeaching Case — One Person, Two Tasks, Same Fortnight
Two bars drawn side by side look like two things happening in parallel, and they are — unless the same person is on both. Sam is booked at 200% for a fortnight here. The bars are the correct bars; the plan is still impossible. The engine sweeps every resource against its declared capacity and says who, when, and on what.
Project & PlanningTeaching Case — What "I Could Not Check That" Looks Like
The most important template here, and nothing in it is badly written: it is an ordinary plan in its first week, with one task nobody has estimated yet. Everything downstream of that task therefore has NO DATE. Rather than drawing bars anyway, the engine leaves those rows blank, says which task caused it, and reports the plan as not verified. That state — checked, and could not decide — is the one most tools never show anyone.
Project & PlanningConference Programme — Progress Against a Stated Today
A twelve-week event plan with percentage progress on each task, checked against a `today` the DOCUMENT states rather than a clock. That is deliberate: an engine with a clock renders a different figure tomorrow, which cannot be cached, diffed, thumbnailed or verified. Reports clean, with the progress on every bar consistent with the dates around it.
Project & PlanningClinical Trial — Elapsed-Day Waiting Periods
Regulatory clocks do not pause for the weekend. Every waiting period here is written in calendar days (`30cd`), and the engine converts each one to working days from wherever its predecessor actually lands — so a submission that finishes on a Friday waits the same thirty days as one that finishes on a Tuesday, and the bars differ accordingly. Reports clean.
Project & PlanningRelative Plan — Day Numbers, Because No Date Was Stated
A plan with no start date is still a plan: five days, then ten, then three. The engine schedules it, computes the critical path and the float, and draws the axis in DAY NUMBERS — because inventing a Monday would put a fabricated Tuesday under every bar and a fabricated weekend in the middle of one. There is deliberately no `calendar` line either: with no date there is no way to know which day is a Saturday, so declaring a working week here would declare something the engine cannot apply — and it says so if you do. Add `start 2026-03-02` and every bar becomes a date, on the week you then declare, without another edit.
Project & PlanningBaseline vs Actual — What Was Agreed, Under What Follows
Each bar carries a ghost underneath: the span that was agreed at kick-off. The bar above it is what the current durations and dependencies actually produce. A baseline is the one thing in this engine taken from the document rather than computed, because it is a historical claim and there is nothing to derive it from — everything above it is derived. Reports clean.
Project & PlanningThe Same Schedule as a Precedence Network
One line — `view network` — and the same document draws the activity-on-node network instead of the bars: a box per task carrying its own early start, duration, early finish, float, and what shortening it actually buys. Both views come from ONE schedule, so they cannot disagree; a network computed by a second pass would be two answers to one question. Reports clean.
Project & PlanningSix-Day Site Week — The Calendar Is Not An Assumption
The same durations under a Monday-to-Saturday working week, which is what a construction site runs. The working week is declared, not assumed, so "12 days" means one unambiguous thing and the engine says which — and the non-working days are shaded, so a bar that takes twelve days and spans fourteen is legible as such rather than mysterious. Reports clean.
Project & Planning