Frequently asked questions
How the Lodestone works, what the pillars mean, and why we built Ekumene this way. Don't see your question? Get in touch.
Getting Started
Ekumene is a triage system for your life. It connects to your existing task manager and calendar to show you what actually needs to happen today — and why. Think of it as a way to cut through 47 tasks to see which 3 matter right now.
Most productivity tools help you collect tasks. They don't help you choose between them. Ekumene classifies everything into Tier 1/2/3 based on deadlines, dependencies, and how much time remains. It surfaces conflicts, propagates prerequisites backward from deadlines, and shows its reasoning. You can override any decision. We don't help you do more — we help you see what's actually urgent.
Ekumene organizes your life into six domains: Work (paid or obligated activities), Projects (building for future you), Health (staying functional), People (relationships that matter), Home (keeping life running), and Rest (restoring your energy). Every task belongs to exactly one pillar, giving you visibility across your whole life.
The Lodestone is Ekumene's intelligence engine. It answers two questions: "What matters most?" (urgency) and "What's actually possible?" (feasibility). For urgency, it classifies every task into three tiers: Tier 1 (must happen today), Tier 2 (should happen today), Tier 3 (could happen today). For feasibility, it checks whether today's priorities fit in the windows you actually have — and shows you the conflict honestly when they don't.
The math is deterministic: tracking remaining time, prerequisite chains, and signal aggregation are pure calculation. The AI (Claude from Anthropic) does one thing: classify tasks into tiers based on context. Every classification shows its reasoning, and you can override any decision. We use AI where judgment helps and math where precision matters.
Integrations
Ekumene integrates with Todoist (for tasks) and Google Calendar (for events). Sync is manual — go to Settings to refresh anytime. Task completions sync back to Todoist. Google Calendar is read-only.
We recommend both for the full experience — tasks from Todoist and events from Google Calendar give Ekumene complete visibility into your commitments. But you can start with just one and add the other later.
For Todoist: task completions in Ekumene sync back to Todoist. For Google Calendar: Ekumene is read-only — it reads your events but never writes to your calendar.
We're exploring integrations with other calendar providers (Outlook, Apple Calendar) and task managers. If you have a specific need, let us know — we prioritize based on what users ask for.
Troubleshooting
Go to Settings in the Ekumene app and click "Connect" next to the integration you want to add. You'll be redirected to authorize access. Once connected, click "Sync" to import your tasks and events.
The extension lets you capture tasks from any webpage. Click the extension icon or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+E / Cmd+Shift+E) to open quick capture. Select text on a page and it becomes your task title.
First, check that the integration is still connected in Settings. If it shows as connected, try disconnecting and reconnecting. If the issue persists, contact support@ekumene.ai with details about what you're seeing.
Yes. Go to Settings and click "Download" next to "Export data" to download your data as JSON. This includes your profile, pillars, projects, tasks, and documents.
Email support@ekumene.ai with a description of what happened, what you expected to happen, and any screenshots if helpful. Include your browser and device type to help us reproduce the issue.
Privacy & Security
Ekumene accesses your calendar events and tasks to provide its planning features. We process this data using AI (Claude from Anthropic) to classify tasks into tiers. We never sell your data, and we don't use it to train AI models.
Yes. All data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. OAuth tokens for connected services are stored encrypted. We follow industry best practices for security and regularly audit our systems.
Yes. You can delete your account at any time from Settings. This permanently removes your data from our database. You can also disconnect integrations to stop syncing without deleting your account.
Yes. You have the right to access, correct, and delete your personal data. Contact us at privacy@ekumene.ai for any data-related requests.