Hatch it.
Let's get cracking!
I built Hatch It because my unfinished work kept nagging at me. It is a Chrome extension that keeps your launches, their tasks and who owns them one click away. Every launch is an egg: it incubates while the date is far, cracks as it gets close, and hatches into a chick when you ship. Miss the date and it turns into fried chicken.
3 hatching soon · 1 overcooking
Q4 newsletter
Overcooking · 2d overPricing page redesign
Hatching soon · 3d leftLaunch new feature
Incubating · 15d leftWhere it started
There is a name for the itch: the Zeigarnik Effect, our tendency to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks more than finished ones. My mind had been doing exactly that all week.
I had just caught up with a colleague to line up the release of an initiative: the remaining UX improvements, UI fixes and dependencies. It made me notice where I struggle. My task lists live in different places, everything feels high-priority even when it isn’t, and outside work I have a pile of parked projects waiting for me to pick them up again.
Then a thought landed: we are sort of hatching these projects. You incubate something for months, and just as it is about to hatch you realise you are not ready for what is still missing. I wanted that visibility.
What it is
Hatch It keeps the date of a launch in front of you, and makes it feel like something alive that needs looking after. A side panel shows all your ongoing launches at a glance, and opening one shows the full countdown, its tasks, and the people working on it.
It lives in a Chrome side panel, so the countdown stays open next to whatever you are working on. It is now live on the Chrome Web Store.
Why a Chrome extension
I spend my day switching between the browser, the terminal and AI tools, so another app would not have cut it. Launch dates live in the browser anyway, in tickets, docs, mail and design files. The countdown should live there too, in the toolbar.
The side panel stays open next to the tab you are in, so checking a deadline never means switching apps.
The toolbar icon is designed to carry a small badge for launches that need attention, like the overcooking one.
It only asks for attention when a date is close, through the egg and the badge, not through notifications.
The egg lifecycle
Instead of a progress bar, the state of a launch is a character that changes as the date approaches. Try it: drag the timeline forward and watch the egg warm up, crack, and hatch, or hatch it and see how it ends. The stages follow how much of the project’s time is used, so it works the same for a one-week sprint or a full quarter.
Incubating
Tip: tap the character, hover a stage, or hatch it early and late to see both endings.
How it works
Open the panel
Click the Hatch It icon in Chrome’s toolbar. The side panel opens beside your tab and lists every ongoing launch, soonest first.
Plan the tasks
Add tasks with an owner, a due date, and what they depend on. Anything waiting on unfinished work shows as blocked.
Ship, then tidy up
Mark a launch as launched, then archive it. A tidy-up button clears everything that has already shipped.
The design idea
Most deadline trackers are lists and numbers, so the date turns into background noise. I wanted the countdown to be something you notice and care about, without it getting in the way of work. Just a simple tool with clear ownership of tasks and visibility into the bigger initiative.
The character does the emotional work, and the number stays plain. People on a launch show up as “Hatchers”, so it is clear who is carrying it, and a task’s dependencies are visible where you read the task.
How I built it
I would normally start by sketching flows. This time I wrote the spec on the train. I had never built a browser extension before, but it felt worth learning, and the best way to learn something new is to build something you actually need.
I used Claude Code and Codex like two teammates who keep each other in check. They worked on different prototypes with different workflows, I tested them, and we merged what worked best. I automated checks, including accessibility and usability heuristic reviews, and deleted about 80% of my first ideas. It took four days, with a Monday deadline so I could start using it right away.
Where it is now
Hatch It passed review and is live on the Chrome Web Store. It is free, needs no account, and keeps everything in your own browser: there are no servers and no tracking. It asks for two permissions only, sidePanel to show the panel and storage to save your launches on your device.
Shipping it meant a few things beyond the build: a product page, a privacy policy and terms of use, and a store listing. Now the egg I incubated for four days has hatched.