Why Planner
We built the tracker we wanted — and moved our whole company onto it.
UQ Planner is the project tracker UniqTech, a software studio in Ho Chi Minh City, plans, documents and ships with every day. It exists because the tools we paid for stopped fitting how we work.
Jira got expensive and rigid
We ran UniqTech on Jira for years. Two things never fit. The bill grew every time the team did: per-seat pricing is fair in principle, but at agency scale — developers, QA, designers, clients who only need to review — it adds up fast, and the price per seat kept rising. The workflow was rigid in exactly the places our process is not: client reviews, QA gates, and code written by AI agents that needs proof before anyone merges it.
So we wrote our own. Planner covers what we actually used in Jira — projects, Kanban boards, epics, tasks, bugs, subtasks, dates, comments, attachments — and adds the pieces we kept bolting on from elsewhere.
Customise any workflow
In Planner a workflow is yours to draw on a visual editor: the statuses, their colours, the arrows showing how work flows between them, and the order of the board's columns. Build one for software delivery, one for bug triage, one for content — and reuse each across every project that runs the same process. Card templates add the custom fields each kind of work needs (priority, estimate, client, environment…) without a plugin marketplace. See custom workflows and card templates.
Built for humans and AI agents on the same board
A growing share of our code is written with AI coding agents. Most trackers treat an agent as an integration bolted onto the side. In Planner an agent works the same board as the team, as the person whose API key it uses:
- The uqplanner CLI hands the agent one task at a time, as a Markdown file with the description, epic, linked docs and comments.
- The agent does the work, ticks subtasks, writes a comment saying what changed and how it was tested.
- It attaches evidence — test videos, screenshots, logs — to the task, and moves it to review. A person reviews it like any other ticket.
Every action is recorded against a real user, so nothing an agent does is anonymous. Details: the CLI for AI coding agents. There is also a public guide written for the agents themselves at /llms.txt.
Docs are Git
Specs and decisions live next to the tickets they describe, in a documentation space per project. That space is a real Git repository: edit in the browser, or clone it over SSH, write in your editor and push. Developers keep their tools; everyone else keeps the web editor. See Docs and Git over SSH.
Why TypeScript (NestJS + Next.js)
Planner is a web-heavy product: drag-and-drop boards, a rich text editor, a visual workflow editor, diagrams, live previews. That is the JavaScript ecosystem's home ground, so we wrote the whole stack in TypeScript — a NestJS API and a Next.js web app, with the CLI in TypeScript too. One language end to end means shared types between server, client and CLI, the largest library ecosystem for exactly these UI problems, and a small team shipping features quickly. Public pages like this one are rendered on the server, so they load fast and are readable without JavaScript.
An honest comparison
Jira, Linear and ClickUp are good products with far bigger teams behind them. Here is where Planner differs, and where they are ahead. Competitor prices are approximate list prices as of 2026 — check their sites, they change often.
| UQ Planner | Jira | Linear | ClickUp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Up to 10 people per organisation, every feature | Up to 10 users | Yes, with limits | Yes, with limits |
| Paid, per user / month | 49.000 ₫ (VND pass) or US$4.99 monthly / US$3.99 annual | Standard about US$9–10 (as of 2026, check their site) | Basic US$10, Business US$16 billed yearly (as of 2026, check their site) | Unlimited US$7, Business US$12 billed yearly (as of 2026, check their site) |
| What paying unlocks | More than 10 people, Pro badge, priority support — no features are gated | More features and limits per tier | More teams and features per tier | More features and storage per tier |
| Custom statuses, reusable across projects | Yes — drawn on a visual editor; arrows are a guide, not enforced | Yes, with enforced transitions and rules | Custom statuses per team | Custom statuses |
| Docs next to tasks | Built in, per project | Separate product (Confluence) | Project documents | Yes |
| Docs as a Git repository over SSH | Yes | No | No | No |
| CLI that hands tasks to AI coding agents with evidence | Yes | Via apps / integrations | Via integrations and API | Via integrations and API |
| Pay in VND by bank transfer / VietQR | Yes | No | No | No |
| Ecosystem, integrations, mobile apps | Small — web app, CLI and API | Huge marketplace | Many integrations, mobile apps | Many integrations, mobile apps |
Choose Jira if you need its marketplace, enterprise admin controls or deep reporting. Choose Linear if you want the most polished, opinionated issue tracker and its fixed workflow suits you. Choose ClickUp if you want one tool for every department, with many views and automations. Choose Planner if you want to define your own process, keep docs in Git, let AI agents work tickets with receipts, and pay a flat per-seat price in VND or USD — or nothing at all up to 10 people.
What Planner does not do (yet)
- No native mobile apps — the web app works in a mobile browser.
- No third-party app marketplace. Automation is through the CLI and the HTTP API with API keys.
- No import tool from Jira, Linear or ClickUp yet — tell us if you need one. (Pasting a Jira description keeps its formatting and images.)
- Workflow arrows are not enforced: any card can move to any status. There are no automation rules on transitions.