A new kind of PM tool · Built in public

Forecast from what your team delivers,
not what they predict.

PtahCast is a flow-based project management tool with Monte Carlo probabilistic forecasting built into the data model from day one — not added as a reporting plug-in. No story points. No velocity. No pretending.

"Every other tool asks you to estimate before you start.
We ask you to measure while you work."

The PtahCast principle

The problem

Your burndown chart is guessing.

Sprint velocity, story points, planning poker — these are rituals that make uncertainty feel managed without actually reducing it. The estimate your team committed to in sprint planning is going to slip. Everyone in the room knows it.

The old model

Estimate → commit → miss → explain

Attach a story point count to every ticket before work starts. Accumulate velocity. Produce a sprint commitment. Watch it slip. Run a retrospective about why it slipped. Repeat. Teams spend 20–30% of their time in ceremonies built around this cycle, and the forecasts are no more accurate than a gut feeling would have been.

The PtahCast model

Measure → forecast → decide with confidence

Track how many tickets your team actually completes per week. Run 10,000 simulations over that distribution. Get an honest probability range: 50% done by this date, 85% by that one. No estimates on tickets. No velocity. No pretending the uncertainty isn't there.

What we're building

Three systems. One source of truth.

Most tools put a forecast chart on top of a board. PtahCast builds the forecast into the board's data model. Every ticket movement is a data point. No extra setup. No CSV exports. No second tool.

I — The Board

Flow, not sprints

Kanban-style columns with WIP limits. Work moves when it's ready, not when a sprint boundary arrives. Every column transition is timestamped — this is the raw data the forecast engine runs on.

WIP limits Classes of service Transition log Sprint mode optional
II — The Backlog

Inbox and Ready. Nothing in between.

Tickets live in Inbox until the team agrees they're workable — acceptance criteria defined, nothing missing. Only Ready tickets reach the board. The board stays a picture of active work, not a wish list.

Definition of Ready Acceptance criteria PM-controlled gate Needs Clarification
III — The Forecast

Probability, not promises

Monte Carlo simulation over your team's actual throughput history. Run at the epic level or the full board level. A probability distribution over completion dates — not a date that will slip, a range that is honest about what can and cannot be known.

Monte Carlo Epic forecast Board forecast Stored runs

Building in public

We're building this in the open.

No stealth mode. No locked beta. The decisions, the wrong turns, and the methodology are all going up as we build. If you've been maintaining a Monte Carlo spreadsheet alongside Jira, this is being built for you.

Phase 1 — Foundation ← Now

Board, backlog (Inbox / Ready), epics, WIP limits, classes of service, transition logging.

Phase 2 — Forecasting

Monte Carlo engine. Epic forecast view. Board forecast view. Stored forecast history.

Phase 3 — Flow Metrics

Throughput run chart. Cycle time scatter plot. WIP over time. Cumulative flow diagram.

Phase 4 — Launch

Free tier, Growth and Business plans. Self-hosted Docker deployment per company.

Build status · June 2026

Current phase Phase 1 — Foundation
Stack Flask · SQLite · Python
Deployment model Self-hosted · Docker per company
Forecasting engine Monte Carlo over throughput
Story points Zero. None. Never.
Free tier 1 project · Full forecasting

The name

Why Ptah?

Ptah was the Egyptian god of craftsmen, architects, and builders — the patron deity of those who shape raw material into something precise and useful. Sculptors, metalworkers, engineers: Ptah was their god.

What set him apart from every other deity in the Egyptian pantheon was how he created. He did not forge the world through physical effort. He created by speaking truth. He declared what was real, and it became real. In a mythology full of gods who acted, Ptah was the one who told the truth about what was.

That is not an accidental connection to what this tool does. PtahCast is built on a single premise: that an honest declaration of uncertainty is more useful than a false promise of precision. Telling your stakeholders "there is an 85% chance this is done by 29 October" is not a hedge. It is the truth, spoken clearly. The sprint commitment that slips to the next sprint and the one after that — that was never the truth.

Ptah was also said to give craftsmen the ability to see the finished form inside unworked stone — to know what a thing would become before it fully existed. We like that too.