Talk to Pip
Most timeline tools require you to know exactly what you are building before you start. You set the dates, name the tasks, organise the groups, and hope the structure makes sense once it is all in.
Plan Anything includes an AI assistant called Pip, short for Planning In Progress. You describe what you need in plain English, and Pip updates the plan around it. You can type your instruction or speak it using voice input. Both work identically.
This article covers everything you can ask Pip to do today, how to get the best results, and what is coming next.
One Command at a Time
Pip works best when you treat it like a precise conversation, not a brief. One clear instruction at a time produces better results than a single message describing an entire project.
Instead of describing a full plan in one go, build it in sections. Create a group, add its tasks, move on to the next group. If two phases of a project look similar, build one and duplicate it rather than describing the same structure twice.
This approach is faster than it sounds. Each command takes a few seconds to apply. The plan takes shape quickly, and you stay in control of what gets added and when.
Working With Tasks
The most common commands involve creating and adjusting tasks. You can add a task to a specific group with a date range, move a task to new dates, extend or shorten how long a task runs, and rename, delete, or duplicate tasks as the plan evolves.
You can also change the order tasks appear within a group, or move a task into a different group entirely. These are separate actions. Reordering changes the visual position. Moving to a group changes the task's phase.
A few examples of how these sound in practice.
"Add a QA Review task to the Testing group, February 20 to 25."
"Move Design Mockups to March 10 to 17."
"Make Development 10 working days long."
"Put UAT after Integration Testing."
"Move the API task to the Backend group."
"Duplicate the API Integration task."
All dates work in working days. Weekends are skipped automatically.
Working With Groups
Groups in Plan Anything represent phases or sections of a project. You can create new groups, remove them, rename them, and control where they appear relative to other groups.
When you delete a group, its tasks are automatically moved to the first available group unless you tell Pip where they should go instead.
"Add a Discovery phase before Design."
"Delete the Legacy group and move its tasks to Backend."
"Rename Phase 1 to Discovery."
Assignees
If your project has assignees enabled, you can add or remove a person from a task by name.
"Assign Sarah to the Design task."
"Remove James from Development."
Dependencies, Costs, and Notes
Beyond structure, Pip handles the detail work that usually takes the most time.
You can link tasks together so one must finish before another starts, and remove those links when the relationship changes. You can assign costs to tasks as a one-time amount, a daily rate, or an hourly rate, and remove a cost when it no longer applies. You can pin notes to specific dates on a task bar and write or append to a task's main notes area.
"Make Development depend on Design Approval."
"Set Development to five hundred dollars one-time."
"Make Design one hundred and fifty dollars per day."
"Remove the cost from the API task."
"Add a note to Design on March 5: client review call."
"Add to the notes for UAT: focus on mobile flows."
Comments work differently from notes. A comment is a discussion-style addition that always appends and never replaces what is already there. Notes can be set or overwritten.
Appearance and Project Details
You can change the colour of any task or group. Changing a group's colour updates all its tasks at the same time. You can show or hide the critical path overlay on the Gantt. And you can update the project description that appears in the project summary.
"Make the Testing group orange."
"Show the critical path."
"Set the project description to: website redesign for Q2 launch."
Asking Questions
Not every message needs to change something. You can ask Pip questions about the plan and it will answer without making any edits.
"How long is the Development phase?"
"When does UAT finish?"
"What tasks are in the Build group?"
This is useful when you are reviewing a plan and want to check something quickly without navigating to a specific task.
Using Your Voice
Every command works the same whether you type it or speak it. Tap the microphone button, say your instruction clearly, and tap stop. The audio is transcribed and sent as a message automatically.
Voice works best with short, specific instructions. One command per recording. Speak naturally and stop when you have finished the instruction. The same rule that applies to typed commands applies here: one clear request at a time produces the best result.
What Is Coming Next
A few commands are not available yet but are planned based on how people use the product today.
Duplicating a group will let you copy a phase and all its tasks in one step, then adjust the dates. This is the right approach when two sections of a project share the same structure.
Moving a group will shift every task within a phase forward or back by a number of days, or anchor the group to a new start date. You can already drag a collapsed group on the Gantt to do this. The chat version will make the same action available by voice and text.
Generative scaffolding will allow you to ask Pip to create content it decides on, not just content you specify. You will be able to ask for the top-level phase structure of a project type, fill out a single group with typical tasks, or generate a complete timeline from a short description. Starting with the structure only and filling in sections one at a time will always be the safest approach.
The Same Plan, Less Work
Pip does not change what your plan is. It changes how quickly you can build and adjust it.
The plan is still yours. Every task, every date, every group is editable directly. Pip is a faster way to get there, not a replacement for your judgement about what the plan should say.
You describe what you need.
The plan updates.
You stay in control.
