Chaos vs Linear: Task Management vs Issue Tracking Showdown

Category: Reviews · Stage: Decision

By Max Beech, Head of Content

Updated 15 October 2025

"Should I use Linear or Chaos for project management?"

Wrong question.

Linear and Chaos solve different problems. Linear is issue tracking built for engineering teams. Chaos is task management built for personal productivity. Comparing them directly is like comparing Jira to your personal to-do list—they're different categories.

But people do compare them because both can theoretically manage tasks. I spent 90 days using both: Linear for team work, Chaos for personal tasks, and each in the other's domain (forcing Linear for personal tasks, forcing Chaos for team issue tracking).

Here's what each does brilliantly, what each does terribly, and how to choose.

TL;DR

• Linear is issue tracking for engineering teams—excels at workflows, sprint planning, and team coordination; terrible for personal task management
• Chaos is personal task management with AI—excels at individual productivity, calendar integration, and context-aware reminders; not designed for team collaboration
• Core difference: Linear thinks in projects/issues/cycles; Chaos thinks in tasks/time/context
• Team work: Use Linear (Chaos isn't built for this)
• Personal work: Use Chaos (Linear is overkill and clunky)
• Hybrid approach: Linear for team issues + Chaos for personal tasks is common (I do this)
• Migration pain: Both have strong lock-in—choose carefully before investing

Jump to: What each is designed for | Feature comparison | 90-day testing results | Use case scenarios | Migration considerations

What each tool is actually designed for

Linear: Issue tracking for product teams

Linear is built for software teams managing features, bugs, and technical debt through structured workflows.

Core mental model:

• Issues (features, bugs, tasks) are the atomic unit
• Projects group related issues
• Cycles (sprints) organize work into 1-2 week iterations
• Teams own different areas (backend, frontend, design)
• Workflows define issue states (Backlog → Todo → In Progress → Done)

Typical user: Product manager or engineer saying "We need to ship the user authentication feature by end of sprint—break it into issues, assign owners, track progress."

What it's brilliant at:

• Prioritizing backlogs (keyboard shortcuts make bulk triage fast)
• Sprint planning (drag issues into cycles, see capacity)
• Workflow visualization (kanban boards, velocity tracking)
• Team coordination (who's working on what, blockers, dependencies)

What it's terrible at:

• Personal tasks unrelated to projects ("Buy groceries," "Call accountant")
• Calendar integration (Linear issues aren't calendar events)
• Context-aware reminders (issues due Tuesday 2 PM regardless of your calendar)
• Quick capture (mobile app exists but optimized for issue creation, not rapid task capture)

Chaos: Personal task management with AI

Chaos is built for individuals managing work and life tasks with AI-powered prioritization and calendar integration.

Core mental model:

• Tasks (anything you need to do) are the atomic unit
• Calendar integration—tasks and events coexist
• Context (location, time, energy) determines when tasks surface
• AI handles organization, prioritization, and scheduling

Typical user: Knowledge worker saying "I have 47 things to do across work, home, and side projects—tell me what matters right now."

What it's brilliant at:

• Rapid task capture (voice, text, email—all frictionless)
• Calendar-native task management (see tasks and meetings together)
• Context-aware reminders ("Buy milk" fires when you're near the store, not at 2 PM when you're in a meeting)
• AI prioritization (less decision fatigue about what to work on)

What it's terrible at:

• Team collaboration (no issue assignment, commenting, or shared projects)
• Structured workflows (no kanban states or sprint planning)
• Technical project tracking (no dependencies, subtasks, or velocity charts)
• Cross-platform (Apple-focused, limited Android support currently)

Feature-by-feature comparison

Breaking down specific capabilities helps clarify the gulf between these tools.

Task/Issue creation

Linear:

• Keyboard-driven (Cmd+K anywhere → create issue)
• Templates for common issue types (bug reports, feature requests)
• Automatic assignment to projects/teams based on labels
• Rich markdown, attachments, linked issues

Chaos:

• Voice-first (Siri integration: "Remind me to email Sarah about the proposal")
• Natural language parsing ("Coffee with John next Tuesday 3pm" → task with date/time)
• Email forwarding (send email to your Chaos address → task created)
• Quick-add widget on iOS

Winner: Chaos for personal tasks (faster capture), Linear for team issues (better structure and context).

Organization

Linear:

• Projects (multi-issue initiatives)
• Labels (categorization)
• Teams (ownership)
• Milestones (deadlines for project groups)
• Cycles (sprints)

Chaos:

• Projects (optional grouping)
• Tags (simple categorization)
• AI auto-organization (suggests grouping by context)
• No teams, milestones, or cycles

Winner: Linear decisively. If you need structured organization, Linear is purpose-built for it.

Prioritization

Linear:

• Manual priority levels (P0-P4 or custom)
• Backlog ordering (drag to reorder)
• Cycle planning (what ships this sprint)
• Labels for urgency/impact

Chaos:

• AI auto-prioritization (learns from your patterns)
• Manual override available
• Calendar-aware (considers deadlines and availability)
• Context-aware (surfaces tasks when relevant)

Winner: Chaos for individuals (AI reduces decision load), Linear for teams (manual control necessary for shared priorities).

Time management

Linear:

• Due dates on issues
• Cycle planning (sprint-level time management)
• No calendar integration
• No time blocking or scheduling

Chaos:

• Calendar-native (tasks live in calendar view)
• Time-blocking suggestions
• Duration estimates
• Auto-scheduling based on availability

Winner: Chaos overwhelmingly. Linear doesn't think about time beyond due dates. Chaos is calendar-centric.

Collaboration

Linear:

• Issue assignment (who owns what)
• Comments and @mentions
• Slack/GitHub integration (link issues to commits, notify on updates)
• Team views (see your team's work)
• Activity feed (who did what when)

Chaos:

• None (personal tool, no sharing/collaboration)

Winner: Linear by default. Chaos isn't in this category.

Mobile experience

Linear:

• iOS and Android apps
• Primarily for viewing/commenting, not creating
• Keyboard shortcuts don't translate well to mobile
• Functional but desktop-first

Chaos:

• iOS app (excellent)
• Android app (beta, limited)
• Voice capture shines on mobile
• Designed mobile-first

Winner: Chaos for mobile task capture, Linear for viewing team work on the go.

Integrations

Linear:

• Engineering tools: GitHub, GitLab, Figma, Slack, Discord
• Productivity: Zapier (limited), Raycast
• API for custom integrations

Chaos:

• Calendar: Google Calendar, Apple Calendar
• Communication: Email (forwarding), Slack (basic)
• Productivity: Limited (growing)
• API not public yet

Winner: Linear significantly. The engineering tool integration ecosystem is mature.

Pricing

Linear:

• Free: 1 team, unlimited issues, core features
• Standard: £8/user/month (unlimited teams, advanced features)
• Plus: £14/user/month (SSO, advanced admin)

Chaos:

• £8/month individual (full features)
• No free tier currently
• No team pricing (not a team tool)

Winner: Linear (free tier is generous). Chaos requires paid subscription from day one.

Comparison table

| Feature | Linear | Chaos | Winner | |---------|--------|-------|--------| | Task capture speed | Good | Excellent | Chaos | | Organization depth | Excellent | Basic | Linear | | Team collaboration | Excellent | None | Linear | | Calendar integration | None | Excellent | Chaos | | AI features | Basic | Excellent | Chaos | | Mobile experience | Functional | Excellent | Chaos | | Integrations | Excellent | Limited | Linear | | Workflow management | Excellent | None | Linear | | Personal productivity | Poor | Excellent | Chaos | | Project tracking | Excellent | Poor | Linear | | Price | Free-£14 | £8 | Linear |

The 90-day test: using each in its domain and outside it

I used both tools across three scenarios:

1. Linear for team work (ideal use case)
2. Chaos for personal tasks (ideal use case)
3. Cross-domain: Linear for personal tasks + Chaos for team work (stress testing)

Scenario 1: Linear for team engineering work

Context: Managing feature development and bug fixes for a SaaS product with 4 engineers.

Experience:

Linear's keyboard-driven workflow is genuinely fast. Creating issues, prioritizing backlog, planning cycles—all muscle-memory fast once learned.

Workflow:

• Weekly cycle planning (30 min): drag issues into current cycle, assign owners
• Daily: triage new bugs (Cmd+K → create issue → label → assign → close)
• Mid-cycle: move issues across workflow (Backlog → In Progress → In Review → Done)
• End of cycle: velocity review, plan next cycle

What worked brilliantly:

• Backlog management: 100+ issues in backlog, priority order clear, triage fast
• Sprint planning: Seeing team capacity vs committed work prevented over-committing
• GitHub integration: PR merged → issue auto-moved to Done (automation reduced manual updates)
• Team transparency: Anyone can see what anyone's working on (reduces "what's the status?" questions)

What frustrated:

• Personal tasks invisible: My personal work (documentation, planning, admin) didn't fit Linear's model. I still needed a separate personal task manager.
• Calendar blindness: Linear doesn't know about my meetings. Planning 8 hours of issue work when I have 4 hours of meetings that day led to constant re-planning.

Verdict: 9/10 for team engineering work. Linear is exceptional when the work is issues/projects/sprints. Just don't expect it to handle your entire life.

Scenario 2: Chaos for personal productivity

Context: Managing personal work tasks, life admin, content creation, meetings.

Experience:

Chaos's calendar-native approach immediately clicked. Tasks and meetings in one view meant I could see reality: "I have 2 hours free between meetings—what fits?"

Workflow:

• Morning: review Chaos's AI-suggested priorities (usually accurate)
• Throughout day: voice-capture tasks as they occur ("Remind me to follow up with Sarah after her meeting")
• Tasks auto-surface at relevant times (location-based: "Buy coffee" fires when I'm near the shop; time-based: "Review proposal" fires after the client meeting ends)
• Evening: quick review, tomorrow's calendar + tasks preview

What worked brilliantly:

• Capture friction near-zero: Voice input whilst walking, email forwarding whilst reading newsletters, quick-add widget whilst browsing
• Calendar integration: Seeing tasks in calendar context meant realistic planning (I stopped over-committing because I could see my actual available time)
• Context-aware reminders: Location triggers are surprisingly effective ("Buy milk" only matters when I'm at the store)
• AI prioritization: Reduced decision fatigue (instead of staring at 40 tasks wondering which matters, Chaos suggests the top 5)

What frustrated:

• Project tracking weak: For complex multi-step projects (like "plan conference"), Chaos doesn't handle dependencies or sub-tasks well
• No team coordination: When working with others, I still needed email/Slack to coordinate (Chaos didn't help)

Verdict: 8.5/10 for personal productivity. Chaos is excellent for individuals managing work+life. Not suitable for team project tracking.

Scenario 3: Forcing each outside its domain

To truly understand limitations, I forced each tool into the wrong context.

Linear for personal tasks (3 weeks):

Attempted to manage all personal tasks (groceries, errands, life admin) in Linear.

Setup:

• Created "Personal" team
• Created projects: Home, Errands, Admin, Health
• Created issues for tasks

Experience: Absolutely terrible.

• Capture friction high: Creating a Linear issue requires opening app, clicking "New Issue," typing title, selecting project/labels, setting due date. For "Buy milk"? Absurd overhead.
• Mobile clunky: Linear mobile app is functional for viewing team work, awful for rapid personal task capture
• Calendar blindness remains: Linear doesn't show my calendar, so "Plan grocery shopping" has a due date but no awareness that I have meetings all day Tuesday
• Workflow states nonsensical: "Buy groceries" doesn't need Backlog → Todo → In Progress → In Review → Done. It needs "Do it" or "Don't do it."

Verdict: 2/10. Linear actively fights personal task management. Don't do this.

Chaos for team project tracking (3 weeks):

Attempted to manage engineering team's work in Chaos.

Setup:

• Created project "Product Development"
• Added tasks for features and bugs
• Shared calendar with team (so they could see work)

Experience: Also terrible, but for different reasons.

• No issue assignment: Can't assign tasks to specific team members
• No collaboration: No comments, @mentions, or discussion on tasks
• No workflow states: Can't track "In Progress" vs "In Review"—tasks are just done or not done
• Velocity tracking absent: Can't measure team throughput or sprint capacity

Verdict: 1/10. Chaos isn't designed for this. Using it for team work is forcing a screwdriver to be a hammer.

Use case scenarios: when to choose each

Different work contexts demand different tools.

Scenario: Solo developer building side project

Work type: Feature development, bug fixing, technical debt (classic engineering work)

Needs: Issue tracking, prioritization, workflow management, GitHub integration

Recommendation: Linear (free tier).

Even solo, Linear's structure helps: backlog for feature ideas, cycles for planning what ships when, GitHub integration for linking commits to issues.

Alternative: If you want calendar integration and AI prioritization more than structured workflows, Chaos works (but you'll miss Linear's engineering-specific features).

Scenario: Freelance designer juggling clients

Work type: Client projects with deliverables, pitches, admin, life tasks

Needs: Calendar integration, client project separation, deadline management, rapid task capture

Recommendation: Chaos.

Linear's project/issue model doesn't fit freelance client work well (each project isn't a team, workflows are overkill). Chaos's calendar-native approach helps see: "I have client call Tuesday, need to prep proposal before then, when's my free time?"

Alternative: Linear if you want more structure and don't care about calendar integration.

Scenario: Product manager leading engineering team

Work type: Sprint planning, issue triage, roadmap management, stakeholder communication

Needs: Team collaboration, issue tracking, workflow management, GitHub integration

Recommendation: Linear for team work.

But also: Chaos for personal tasks (your 1:1 meeting prep, stakeholder emails, personal admin). Linear handles team work; Chaos handles your individual productivity.

Hybrid approach: Linear for "work we're doing as a team," Chaos for "work only I'm doing." This is what I do and it works brilliantly.

Scenario: ADHD knowledge worker drowning in tasks

Work type: Writing, research, meetings, admin across multiple projects

Needs: Rapid capture, minimal friction, AI to reduce decision paralysis, context-aware reminders

Recommendation: Chaos decisively.

Linear's structure creates decision overhead ("which project does this belong to?"). For ADHD brains, any friction in capture means tasks get forgotten. Chaos's voice capture, AI organization, and context reminders are specifically valuable for executive function challenges.

Scenario: Enterprise team (50+ people) managing product

Work type: Cross-team coordination, complex workflows, integrations with Slack/GitHub/Figma

Needs: Scalable issue tracking, advanced admin, SSO, team management

Recommendation: Linear Plus (£14/user/month).

Chaos isn't in this category at all—it's personal productivity software, not enterprise project management.

Alternatives: Jira (if you hate yourselves), Asana (if you want less engineering focus), ClickUp (if you want overwhelming features).

Migration considerations: switching costs are real

Both tools have lock-in. Consider carefully before committing.

Linear lock-in

What you're investing:

• Learning keyboard shortcuts (muscle memory)
• Building project/label/team taxonomy
• Integrations with GitHub/Slack (webhooks, automations)
• Team workflow habits ("we always triage issues Friday mornings")

Export capabilities:

• CSV export (basic)
• API access (can script export)
• GitHub issues can be synced (if you're using Linear+GitHub)

Migration pain: Moderate to High.

Switching from Linear to another tool (Jira, Asana, etc.) is feasible but painful. Switching from Linear to Chaos is category mismatch—you're moving team work to a personal tool (doesn't make sense).

Chaos lock-in

What you're investing:

• AI learning your patterns (gets better over time)
• Calendar integration and task history
• Capture habits (voice, email forwarding)

Export capabilities:

• Unknown (Chaos is newer, export features unclear)

Migration pain: Moderate.

Switching from Chaos to another personal task manager (Todoist, Things) is feasible (standard task properties: title, due date, project). Switching from Chaos to Linear is category mismatch—you're moving personal tasks to a team tool (doesn't make sense).

The hybrid approach (least lock-in)

Use each for its intended purpose:

• Linear: Team engineering work (issues, features, bugs)
• Chaos: Personal tasks (everything else)

Overhead: Two tools to check daily.

Benefit: Each tool does what it's best at. Low switching cost (you can change personal task manager without affecting team work and vice versa).

My setup:

• Morning: Check Chaos (what's on my calendar, what tasks matter today)
• Work hours: Linear open (managing team issues, triage, planning)
• Throughout day: Capture personal tasks in Chaos (voice/quick-add)
• End of day: Chaos review (tomorrow prep)

Works brilliantly. No conflict between tools because they serve different contexts.

Key takeaways

• Linear and Chaos are different categories: Linear is issue tracking for teams, Chaos is personal task management—direct comparison is category error
• Linear excels: Team collaboration, structured workflows, sprint planning, engineering integrations—terrible for personal tasks and calendar integration
• Chaos excels: Personal productivity, calendar integration, AI prioritization, context-aware reminders—not designed for team work
• 90-day testing: Each is brilliant in its domain (9/10 and 8.5/10 respectively), terrible outside it (2/10 and 1/10)
• Hybrid approach: Linear for team issues + Chaos for personal tasks is common and effective (what I use)
• Migration: Both have lock-in—choose based on whether you need team collaboration (Linear) or personal productivity with calendar integration (Chaos)

The honest recommendation

If you're asking "Linear or Chaos?", you're probably in one of these situations:

Situation 1: You're on a product team and need issue tracking. → Use Linear. Chaos won't serve you.

Situation 2: You're an individual managing work and life tasks. → Use Chaos (or Todoist, Things, Sunsama—any personal task manager). Linear won't serve you.

Situation 3: You're a team lead managing both team work and personal productivity. → Use both. Linear for team, Chaos for personal. Accept the overhead of two tools because each does its job well.

Situation 4: You're a solo developer who likes structure. → Try Linear (free tier) first. If you find calendar integration and AI prioritization more valuable than structured workflows, try Chaos.

The wrong answer is forcing either tool outside its intended domain. Don't use Linear for groceries. Don't use Chaos for team sprint planning.

Match tool to task.

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Disclosure: I use both tools daily—Linear for team engineering work, Chaos for personal productivity. This comparison reflects genuine usage, not marketing.

Try Chaos for personal productivity: 14-day free trial →