Getting started with Hatchlog

Install and activate

Download Hatchlog from the download page and drag it to your Applications folder. Open it, and when it asks, paste the licence key from your purchase email. That's the whole activation — there's no account to make.

screenshot The Hatchlog licence screen with a field for the key from the purchase email.

Paste the key from your email once. The app remembers it.

Create a project

A project is one board. Press ⌘N or use the sidebar to add one, then give it a name and a short key like LUM. You land on an empty board with four columns: Todo, In progress, In review and Done.

Connect an agent

Open Connect agents from the sidebar. Each agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or Claude Desktop — has a Connect button next to it. Click it once and the agent picks up the Hatchlog tools on its next session. There's nothing to edit by hand.

screenshot The Connect agents sheet with Claude Code connected and Cursor connecting.

One click per agent. 'Connected' means the tools are in place.

For the exact clicks and how to check it worked, see Connect Claude Code.

Ask your agent to plan something

In your agent, describe a feature the way you normally would, and ask it to plan it into Hatchlog. It writes a plan and breaks it into tasks with priorities and acceptance criteria. The tasks appear in Todo on their own, and from the next session the agent starts picking them up.

screenshot A Hatchlog board with freshly planned tasks in the Todo column and one card in progress.

The plan becomes tasks. You didn't drag a single card.

That's the loop. To understand what the agent can and can't do on the board, read Working with agents.