iPad Week Calendar, Pomodoro, Quick Capture, rich notes, and MCP

Ok so this is a overdue catch-up changelog 😅

The last update here was December 26, and since then I’ve shipped a lot across Ellie on web, desktop, iPhone, iPad, integrations, and the API/MCP side.

Some of it is very obvious. A lot of it is the boring-but-important work around recurring tasks, timezones, rollover, calendar sync, timers, and tasks mysteriously ending up somewhere they shouldn’t.

Here are the five biggest updates:

Ellie now has a real Week Calendar on iPad. You can see the shape of your week at once, keep the day you are planning in view, and move between the calendar and your tasks without shrinking everything into an iPhone-sized layout.

It makes the iPad feel like a proper weekly planning surface instead of a stretched mobile app.

You can now start a Pomodoro directly from a task. Choose your focus and break lengths, then keep the session visible while you work. On web and desktop, it can stay in Ellie's floating timer or the Mac menu bar.

Your active session is restored if Ellie reloads or briefly goes offline, so a refresh does not erase the work you already put in.

Quick Capture now works like a small standalone desktop window. Open it with a global shortcut while you are in another app, type the task, and save it without opening the full Ellie window.

You can include a date, label, list, or time estimate as you type. Ellie's keyboard shortcuts are also customizable now, including the shortcuts for showing Ellie and opening Quick Capture.

Task and template notes are now proper rich text across web and iOS. Add bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough text, links, and bulleted or numbered lists. On the web, familiar Markdown shortcuts work while you type; on iOS, the formatting toolbar stays close to the keyboard.

You can also duplicate a task. On web, you can save an existing task as a template, which makes repeatable workflows much faster to set up.

MCP / API Access is now available as a beta Power Feature. Ellie gives you a secure URL you can add to an MCP-compatible client, plus the existing API key used by integrations such as Zapier.

This is the beginning of making Ellie useful from more of the places where your work already happens. Because MCP access is still in beta, please send anything that feels off to chris@aloa.co.

Thanks for continuing to use Ellie and for sending such thoughtful feedback. A few of these changes came directly from the feedback board, and there is a lot more I want to improve next.

More soon—and hopefully the next changelog will not take eight months 😅

— Chris