Extroverted Developer

Jim Wallace
Jim Wallace
@jim@extroverteddeveloper.com
226 posts
2 followers

  • Talk to Your Todos: Taskleef Joins the Claude Plugin Ecosystem

    Your task management just got a conversational upgrade.

    What if managing your todos felt less like clicking through an app and more like talking to a helpful assistant? That’s exactly what Taskleef’s new MCP Server makes possible.

    With Anthropic’s recent launch of Cowork plugins—and the growing ecosystem of MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations—we’re excited to announce that Taskleef now integrates directly with Claude Code and Claude Cowork.

    What This Means for You

    Instead of switching between apps, opening browsers, or remembering which board has what task, you can now manage everything through conversation:

    • “Show me my todos for this week” — Get a quick overview without opening anything.
    • “Create a todo to review the quarterly report by Friday” — It’s added, dated, and ready.
    • “Move the authentication task to In Progress” — Your Kanban board updates instantly.
    • “What’s in my inbox?” — See unassigned tasks that need attention.

    Natural language in, task management out.

    How It Works

    Taskleef’s MCP Server speaks the same language as Claude—literally. The Model Context Protocol is the open standard that connects AI assistants to external tools securely. When you configure Claude with Taskleef’s MCP server, Claude gains access to 39 different tools for managing your todos, boards, tags, and more.

    Here’s the magic: you don’t need to learn these tools. Just describe what you want. Claude figures out which tools to call and handles the rest.

    What You Can Do

    Todo Management Create, complete, search, and organize your tasks. Taskleef understands natural dates like “tomorrow,” “next Monday,” or “in 3 days”—and even extracts tags automatically when you write something like “Review design [work].”

    Kanban Boards Move cards between columns, reorder priorities, and manage WIP limits—all through conversation.

    Collaboration Add comments, manage board members, and control access with Editor, Viewer, and Owner roles.

    Smart Organization Tag your tasks, filter by status, and keep your inbox clean—without manual sorting.

    Getting Started

    Setting up Taskleef with Claude takes just a few steps:

    1. Sign up for Taskleef at taskleef.com
    2. Generate an API key from your account settings
    3. Add the MCP configuration to Claude Code or Claude Desktop
    4. Start talking to your todo list

    Full setup instructions are in our MCP Server documentation.

    Why MCP Matters

    Anthropic’s knowledge-work-plugins repository shows where this is headed: AI assistants that integrate with your actual tools, not just chat about them. The 11 official plugins—covering sales, legal, marketing, customer support, and more—all rely on MCP connections to work.

    Taskleef’s MCP server means you’re not locked into someone else’s productivity system. You get the benefits of AI-powered task management with a tool that’s designed around how you actually work.

    What’s Next

    This is just the beginning. We’re exploring deeper integrations with the Cowork plugin ecosystem, including potential skill bundles that combine Taskleef with calendar management, email triage, and project workflows.

    For now, we’re focused on making the core experience seamless. Try it out, let us know what workflows you want to automate, and help us shape what comes next.

    Ready to manage your todos with AI?

    Sign up for Taskleef →

  • Using only economic theory, explain why the best economists in the world are not all billionaires

  • Taskleef Update: January – February 2025

    Tags System Overhaul

    • Create tags directly from the Tags management page – no need to create them inline anymore
    • Colored tags – add colors to your tags for visual organization on boards
    • Usage counts – see how many tasks use each tag to identify what’s important

    Task Management

    • Mark Complete button added to the task detail modal for quicker completion
    • Confirmation dialogs now appear before deleting tasks, columns, and other items – no more accidental deletions
    • Tooltips on truncated text – hover to see full content when titles are cut off
    • Inbox screen – new dedicated view for todos not yet assigned to any board

    File Attachments

    • Card attachments – you can now attach files to your cards

    Real-Time Notifications

    • Browser push notifications via SignalR – get notified instantly when changes happen on cards you’re subscribed to
    • Click to navigate – clicking a notification takes you directly to the relevant board and card
    • Richer notification context – notifications now show more helpful information

    Authentication & Security

    • Password change – change your password from account settings
    • Email verification – new signups now require email verification
    • Password reset flow – forgot your password? Reset it via email

    User Experience Improvements

    • Onboarding tour – new users get a guided walkthrough of the app
    • Emoji picker – type : to trigger an emoji picker in text fields
    • Email invitations – invite non-registered users to your boards via email
    • Board search – filter boards by keyword on the boards screen
    • Move to Column – right-click context menu now has a submenu to quickly move cards between columns
    • Smarter date parsing – natural language dates like “tomorrow” now default to 9am and respect
      timezones
    • International date clarity – changed “MWF” to “Mon, Wed, Fri” for clearer repeat schedules

    AI Features

    • Model selection – choose which AI model to use when you have multiple providers configured

    Bug Fixes

    • Fixed defer dates not saving when editing tasks
    • Fixed card positioning issues when expanding/collapsing
    • Fixed various drag-and-drop edge cases
    • Improved SignalR connection reliabilit

    Check it out: https://taskleef.com

  • What would you do with AI that was 2x as capable as it is today?

    4x?

    16x?

    Eventually the answer is “everything”

    That’s the trajectory we’re currently on

  • Too big to help

    What’s up with companies of a certain size thinking that it’s totally fine to expect customers to learn about their internal departmental structure?

    I just had a brain dead exchange with a sales rep from Stripe. They asked if they could help me finish setting up my account since as of now I’m not generating any revenue for them.

    I told them the issue was on their end, that they wouldn’t accept all the paperwork I’d already sent them to prove my LLC exists, that I am the sole owner, that it’s at the address it’s at.

    When I mentioned this he sent back a canned template about how financial institutions are heavily regulated (no shit) and need to adhere to Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering regulations.

    I replied, so is my bank who opened my account without a problem but you won’t accept the bank statement with my address that matches my government issued ID.

    I told him that he has more power and access than I do to suggest a change in policy, which is why I was telling him all of this. Oh and he reached out to me.

    He wrote back that he can’t suggest a change in policy, reiterated that he’s on the sales team and that I needed to talk to another department.

    Wild. Like I get that you don’t want to bother because it’s not worth your time, but that’s different from saying you can’t “because you’re on the sales team” wtf? The policy is literally stopping you from making sales. In my experience the ONLY people the executives listen to are the sales people.

    I think that if companies are this big that people feel like they have such a narrowly defined role they can’t do anything then it’s time for them to be broken up into smaller companies. My legal test for this would be 1 hop. If you can’t get the issue resolved in 1 hop from intake, meaning having the front line person get you to the right place in a single transfer, then your company is too big.

  • New York State Bird

    Did you know the New York State bird is the Eastern Bluebird?

  • Promptology

    One of the most powerful AI prompting tips is mixing languages.

    What do I mean? Well LLMs have been trained on all kinds of computer language, not just English.

    For example:

    "Give me a history of the Roman empire -depth 1"

    This will spit out a high level overview, meanwhile:

    "Give me a history of the Roman empire -depth 10"

    Will give you more like a PhD dissertation

    Wha?! How does this work?

    LLMs were also trained on tons of computer commands, so it intrinsically understands the concept of command line arguments or flags. You don’t have to limit your prompting to just English!

    You could say:

    "Use the todo tool to grab the list of open tasks, then take the first one and process it."

    Or equivalently:

    let task::_ = `todo list`

    Extremely precise, and fewer tokens. Here I’m mixing OCaml/F# with Bash syntax.

    You can even express general recursion and looping much more concisely using computer language constructs mixed with english instructions, rather than just trying to describe the loop in english alone.

    Take a look at this Ralph Loop prompt I use for TaskLeef. I was really struggling until I remembered this trick.

  • Paste Anyway is Now Available for Firefox!

    I’m excited to announce that Paste Anyway, our browser extension that restores your ability to paste text on any website, is now officially available for Firefox!

    Some websites disable paste functionality on input fields, forcing you to manually type passwords, email addresses, and other text. This is frustrating and can actually reduce security by discouraging the use of password managers.

    Paste Anyway solves this problem. Simply click the extension icon or right-click and select “Paste Anyway” to paste your clipboard contents into any input field, regardless of the site’s restrictions.

    Features:

    • Works on any website that blocks pasting

    • Supports both popup and context menu access

    • Simulates natural typing for better compatibility

    • Lightweight and privacy-focused – no data collection

    The extension is free, open-source under the MIT License, and requires only clipboard access to function.

    Get it now from the Firefox Add-ons store: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/paste-anyway/

    If you find Paste Anyway useful, please consider leaving a review on the add-ons page. Your feedback helps others discover the extension and helps me improve it!

  • Personal Assistants

    One thing I’ve found surprising about having more resources is the huge gap between the upper middle class and the truely rich.

    One area this comes up all the time is that when I try and get some help from a personal assistant, I often can’t. Companies say they NEED to talk to ME to do things. It’s bullshit, they don’t need to they just want to. I find it a little baffling honestly. I can’t imagine Bill Gates is personally chatting with a sales person on the phone to setup new cable TV service or whatever.

    Soon everyone will have a personal assistant via AI, and I’m already seeing the BS creep in. Certain pages are blocking Claude from accessing them, not for scraping but for accomplishing tasks. It’s their right, but also I think these assistance are quickly going to just sign up for a different service when they encounter these issues without ever getting me involved. Defeating the purpose completely of putting up these counter measures, and losing business toboot.

  • Every time my dog barks because somebody is in the hallway he looks at me like: “Well, are you going to do anything or do I need to defend this house by myself?”

    When I tell him it’s ok that there’s somebody in the hall he walks away like “I am the only person who takes security seriously”