Introducing Dongu: the to-do list that cheers you on

Dongu is live at todongu.com. It is a task manager and daily planner that runs in any modern browser, and it exists because of a simple observation: most task apps are very good at keeping score and very bad at making you feel like you are winning.

That sounds like a small thing. It is not. A to-do list is a place you visit many times a day, and if every visit greets you with a wall of overdue items, you eventually stop visiting. The list did not fail at storing tasks; it failed at making you want to come back. Dongu is my attempt at fixing that half of the problem.

Why another to-do app

I have abandoned more to-do apps than I can comfortably count. The pattern was always the same: an enthusiastic first week, a missed day, a growing pile of overdue items, then a quiet uninstall — followed by the low-grade guilt of knowing the list was still out there somewhere, keeping records.

Those apps were not bad. They were built like ledgers: precise, neutral, and completely indifferent to whether you ever came back. What was missing was any sense that finishing something mattered.

So Dongu takes the opposite stance. Most task apps keep score; Dongu cheers. When you complete a task, the check draws itself in, a soft chime plays, and XP counts up. Milestones get confetti. None of this changes what a to-do list fundamentally is. It changes how the list feels to use — and how it feels is what decides whether you are still using it in three months.

Meet the penguin

Every screen in Dongu is shared with a small penguin. When tasks pile up, it droops. When you work through them, it perks up and cheers you on. It is not a chatbot and it never nags; it simply reacts to your progress, which turns an abstract count of open items into something you can read at a glance.

Dongu is built by one developer and, as the brand joke goes, supervised by one penguin. That is the entire company.

What's inside

Under the cheerfulness there is a full planner. Tasks carry notes, due dates, priorities, color-coded categories, tags, icons, estimated minutes, subtasks, and optional reminders. You can add a task from anywhere with the quick-add shortcut (press q), dictate one by voice on supported browsers, and make tasks recur daily, weekly, monthly, or every N days — completing a recurring task automatically creates the next occurrence. Finished tasks are archived rather than deleted, so your history stays intact.

The same tasks come in three views: a list, a kanban board with customizable columns and drag and drop, and a month calendar. You are not choosing a productivity methodology at signup. You are choosing a view for right now, and you can switch whenever the work changes shape.

Around that core sit the daily-life pieces. Habits get a weekly target and a Monday-to-Sunday grid you tap to check off days. A wellness log tracks water, steps, calories, sleep, exercise, and mood, autosaving as you type. A focus timer runs pomodoro-style sessions with durations you configure, optionally linked to the task you are working on — and focus rooms let you invite friends and compare focus minutes on a live weekly or monthly ranking.

There are also countdowns with a live days-hours-minutes-seconds ticker (deadlines and birthdays hit differently in seconds), shared boards where you and invited friends can assign tasks to each other — including a mode that gives everyone their own copy — and statistics that break your completions down by week, month, year, weekday, hour, and category.

Tying it all together is XP. Tasks pay 10, habit checks 5, completed focus sessions 15, the daily wellness log 5, and each of the 13 achievements adds 25 more when it unlocks. Levels need progressively more XP, a streak counts consecutive days with any XP-earning action, and weekly challenges reset every Monday. Daily fairness caps keep the numbers honest, so the system rewards showing up rather than gaming a counter.

The trial and the founder offer

Every account starts with a 15-day free trial: full access to everything, no credit card. When the trial ends, the account becomes read-only. Your data stays visible and is never deleted — it simply waits until you decide to subscribe.

Because Dongu is new, the first 1000 subscribers get the founder price: $1 per month or $10 per year, kept for as long as the subscription stays active. After that, the standard price is $5 per month or $50 per year. You pick monthly or yearly at checkout, payments are handled by Paddle as the merchant of record, and you can cancel anytime and keep access until the end of the paid period. The finer points are in the trial and subscription guide.

What's ahead

Dongu runs in any modern browser and installs as a PWA, so it can live on your phone's home screen today. Native Android and iOS apps are in development but not yet available — the web app is the way in for now. Beyond that, the roadmap is shaped by what early users ask for; a one-person company gets to steer quickly.

Try it

If this sounds like the kind of list you would keep, create an account and see for yourself. The trial runs 15 days, asks for no card, and starts you off with an empty list, a quiet chime waiting to be earned, and a penguin quietly rooting for you.