Tracker

A self-hosted workspace for running multiple small businesses at once — and now a full content operation on top: a cross-project dashboard, tasks, a lightweight CRM, Notion-style notes, digital products, email sequences, and a content calendar with a built-in AI engine you can drive from the app or straight from Claude Desktop.

Built with Django. No SaaS subscription, no third-party accounts, your data stays in your own SQLite file. Runs as a normal web app or as a packaged desktop app (.exe).

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Features

Business management

• Dashboard — what's due today, this week's plan, a clash warning when two businesses land tasks on the same day, and a work log with weekly totals.
• Projects — track several businesses/projects side by side, each with its own status, priority, and "last worked on" timestamp.
• Tasks — one task list, three views (table, board, calendar), filterable by project, with recurring "habit" tasks tracked per day/week/month.
• Work sessions — log time against a task; it rolls up to the project and the week automatically.
• CRM — contacts with a pipeline status, follow-up reminders (with an email digest command), and an interaction log per contact.
• Pages — nestable, Notion-style notes with a block editor, favorites, and soft-delete trash. Pages can link to a project or a contact.
• Products — digital products tied to a business, with an optional deliverable file, a sales log, and simple funnel steps.
• Email sequences — drip sequences of steps with per-step delays and enrollments.
• Assets — a library of source material (upload a file or paste text / transcripts), with prompt templates and generation jobs for turning that material into content, using the same shared voice profile and AI provider as the content calendar.

Content calendar

• Content items — everything from a content-planning spreadsheet in one record: scheduled date, pillar, content type, topic, platforms, hook, caption, call to action, hashtags, tags/links, audio, a cover image/video, the published link, plus a production status and an approval status.
• Three views — a Sun–Sat calendar grid, a board grouped by approval status (review and approve here), and a filterable table.
• Platforms — TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp seeded out of the box; add more without a code change.

AI engine (bring your own provider)

• AI provider settings — pick OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude) or Google Gemini and swap between them without touching code. Your API key is encrypted at rest (Fernet, derived from SECRET_KEY), never stored in plain text. A "test connection" button confirms it works. One setting drives every AI feature (assets generation, content generation, the assistant, and the MCP tools).
• Voice profile — distil a reusable voice from your own writing (paste samples in the content tools, or from saved assets under Assets). It's a single shared voice profile, applied wherever content is generated so it sounds like you.
• Content templates — named recipes (e.g. "Instagram carousel") that produce a content item's fields (hook → caption → CTA → hashtags) in one ordered run.
• Generate panel — pick a template or write a brief, choose a date, and get a draft content item dropped into the calendar as "Ready for Approval."
• Assistant — a chat page that acts: ask it to list, create, move, approve, schedule, or draft content and it uses the tools to do it.

Use it from Claude Desktop (MCP)

The content tools are also exposed as an MCP server, so you can manage your calendar directly from Claude Desktop — list this week's content, create items, move dates, change status, or have Claude write and save drafts.

• Auto-connect — on first launch the app registers itself with Claude Desktop automatically (no config file editing). You just restart Claude Desktop once.
• No API key needed for this path — Claude Desktop does the thinking on your Claude subscription. The API key above is only for the in-app Generate panel and Assistant chat.
• See mcp_server/README.md for the tool list, example prompts, and manual setup.

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Stack

• Django 5.2, Django REST Framework
• SQLite (single file)
• Tailwind CSS v4 (@tailwindcss/cli, no Node build framework) + a little vanilla JS/fetch — no front-end framework
• AI SDKs: openai, anthropic, google-genai; keys encrypted with cryptography (Fernet)
• mcp (Model Context Protocol) for the Claude Desktop server
• Gunicorn + WhiteNoise for server deployments; PyWebView + Waitress + PyInstaller for the packaged desktop .exe

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Getting started (local development)

git clone https://github.com/djangify/project_tracker.git
cd project_tracker

python -m venv trackervenv
source trackervenv/bin/activate   # Windows: trackervenv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

npm install

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — at minimum set SECRET_KEY. Leave DEBUG=True for local dev.

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

# Build Tailwind's output.css from the source file
node_modules/.bin/tailwindcss -i static/src/input.css -o static/css/output.css --minify

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/, log in with the superuser you created (auth is via Django admin login), and you're in.

Rebuild Tailwind's CSS any time you add classes to a template:

node_modules/.bin/tailwindcss -i static/src/input.css -o static/css/output.css --minify

Turning on the AI features (optional)

The app works fully without AI. To enable generation:

1. Open AI Settings in the app.
2. Paste an API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini, pick which is active, and hit Test connection.

That powers the in-app ✨ Generate panel and the Assistant chat. To drive the calendar for free from Claude Desktop instead, see the MCP section above — that uses your Claude subscription rather than an API key.

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Running tests

python manage.py test

Run the MCP server manually

python manage.py runmcp        # stdio; for Claude Desktop / Code
python manage.py connect_claude  # register this install with Claude Desktop

Building the desktop app

pyinstaller project_tracker.spec

Produces dist/ProjectTracker/ containing ProjectTracker.exe (the app window) and ProjectTracker-mcp.exe (the MCP server Claude Desktop launches). Ship the whole folder.

Deploying (server)

Runs as a single process behind a reverse proxy:

DEBUG=False
python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
gunicorn config.wsgi:application --bind 127.0.0.1:8002 --workers 2 --timeout 60

Set ALLOWED_HOSTS and (if needed) CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS in .env to your real domain, and put HTTPS termination (Caddy, nginx, etc.) in front of gunicorn.

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Scope

Single user, one browser at a time. No multi-user accounts, no billing, no real-time collaboration. The MCP/Claude Desktop connection is local (stdio) — it works from the Claude Desktop app on the same machine, not from claude.ai in a browser.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.