Shootboard user guide

Step 1

What Shootboard is, and who for

You do one shoot and ten separate posts come out of it. A Reel, a Short, a carousel, a story, a text post. Each has its own caption, cover text, time and platform. Most people track that across a spreadsheet, a notes app and three different chats. Shootboard exists to pull that mess into one place.

It is a content calendar, with one difference from an ordinary calendar: it also holds the production work behind the post. Is the script written, is it filmed, is the edit done, is permission cleared — all on the same screen.

Who it helps

• The solo creator. Shooting, editing and posting are all the same person. This is the main user.
• Anyone filming on location. Documentary, travel, history, food — anyone who needs the address, the permission and the "watch out for this here" in one place.
• A small team. There is a read-only link for showing the plan to an editor or a client.

Step 2

The first ten minutes

It works without an account — everything sits in your browser. But if you sign in, the same plan is on your computer, your phone and your tablet at once, and a copy lives in the cloud. For a trial, sign in.

1. Open a project. On the Projects page, "+ Create project". A project is the name of a shoot or a job: "Kariye Mosque episode", "October product launch".
2. Say where you are filming. You can pick a place in the same window, and add a new one from there too.
3. Write two ideas. The Ideas page is where you throw whatever comes to mind. It does not have to be a sentence.
4. Put one entry on the calendar. Tap a day. Mark what it is (Reel, Short, carousel…) and where it goes (YouTube, Instagram…) separately.
5. Tick the steps. Each project has seven; tick them as you go. That is the only way the screen stays readable at a glance.

That is enough to start. The sections below cover what you will need as the work grows.

Step 3

Projects and the seven steps

A project is the job your posts come out of: a shoot, a brand job, a series. Every project has seven steps, and the list is deliberately fixed — you are not asked to design your own, because a fixed list can be read at a glance and everyone's own list cannot.

Reading a row

On a computer each project is one row, and every row is the same height. Under the name there are four small marks, all of them clickable:

• Map — opens the location on a map. The full address is in the mark's tooltip; it is not written out, so it cannot stretch the row.
• Bulb — this project's ideas, with the count. Clicking it opens the Ideas page filtered to that project.
• Document — the same for scripts.
• Next to them: type · shoot date · how many entries.

Deadlines

Each step can carry its own date. Tap the small calendar mark next to the tick box and you enter all seven in one window; once a date is set, the date itself takes the mark's place. A date that passes while its step is still unticked turns red on its own, and the strip at the top of the page tells you how many have slipped. This is the answer to "what did I forget".

On a phone

On a phone the top strip carries only the logo and your account. The user guide, AI settings, reminders, feedback, language and theme all live in the sheet behind the ⋯ button on the right.

On a phone you get cards instead of a table: one card per project, the seven steps below it in a grid, each with its name. Tapping a chip ticks the step.

Step 4

Places

If you film on location, you go back to the same spot. The Places page is for recording it once: address, district, city, map link, who gives permission and how long it takes, and "things to watch out for here" (no tripods inside, power only in the courtyard, crowded before noon).

When a project is linked to a place, that information shows in the project window — it is not copied, it is read live. Update the note on the place and every project there sees the current version.

The picture on the card

You recognise a place by its picture before its name. The top of a place card shows, in order:

• A photo — if you pasted a link, or one was found by search.
• A map tile — if there is no photo, drawn from the coordinates in the map link. It uses OpenStreetMap: no key, no account, no cost.
• Initials — if neither exists, in a colour derived from the name.

So the card is never empty. Someone adding a home studio still sees a full page.

Names in the English interface

When you switch the interface to English, the type word in a place name is translated too: "Selimiye Camii" → "Selimiye Mosque", "Sümela Manastırı" → "Sümela Monastery", "Valens Su Kemeri" → "Valens Aqueduct". The proper name never changes — Kapadokya is Kapadokya in every language.

The translation happens on screen only. The name you typed stays as it is in your data, and the edit window always shows you exactly what you wrote — switching languages breaks nothing. If a type word is not in the dictionary the name is left alone; this is not a translator, just a small dictionary that knows mosques, churches, museums, towers and the like.

Search works in both languages: typing "mosque" in the English interface still finds Selimiye Camii.

Places without a photo

"Look for missing photos" at the top of the page searches Wikipedia for every place that has no photo, one at a time. It usually finds historic buildings; it will not find your home studio — that is normal, and the card still shows its map.

Step 5

The shot checklist

The question before every shoot is the same one: what am I forgetting? The power bank, the spare battery, the lav mic, the permission letter. Every project has a checklist of its own; the Checklist button in the project window opens it.

Items reach the list from three places

• From the place card. Whatever you wrote under "Permission" and "Watch out for" lands here on its own, once that place is a stop of this project. Change the place's note later and the list follows — your ticks and your own notes are kept.
• From your kit list. "Add from my kit list" at the top. Written once, it waits there for every shoot.
• By hand. The ones only this shoot needs — the box at the top.

Inside the list you see two groups: Just for this shoot and From my kit list. Whatever came from the place sits under its own heading, so you can tell where it came from.

The kit list

The Kit link in the top menu opens it. This is where everything you carry to a shoot gets written down once. You can group items — Camera, Audio, Light, Power, Personal, Transport — but you don't have to.

If you already have a list somewhere, in your phone's notes for instance, you don't need to retype it: "Paste a whole list" takes every line as an item.

Kits: a whole group in one tap

If you keep picking the same gear for the same sort of shoot, turn it into a kit. On the kit list page tick a few items, press "Make a kit from the ticked ones" and name it: "Street shoot", "Interview", "Night". From then on, tapping that kit inside any project's checklist drops all of its items in at once.

You can also turn an existing checklist into a kit: "Make a kit from this list" at the bottom. It is the shortest way to repeat the preparation of a shoot that went well.

Ticking

You tick items as you pack; the top says how many are done. Any item can carry a note of its own ("+ note") — "the big one, black bag". When the shoot is over, "Clear the ticks" resets them all: the items stay, only the ticks go. Next time you go to the same place the list is waiting for you.

Step 6

Ideas

An idea is anything that is not a script yet: a sentence, a question, a scene. The Ideas page is where you throw them. It does not have to be tidy, because ideas do not arrive tidy.

Merging and splitting

Drag one idea onto another and they merge; you can pull a single part back out of a merged card. Order changes, nothing is lost.

More than one project

An idea can belong to several projects. If "Byzantine water routes" serves both the cistern episode and the aqueduct episode, you do not copy it: add the second project with the + on the card, and cut a link with the × on a chip.

The filter at the top works the same way: add several projects and see three projects' ideas together.

To-dos: an optional deadline

Some ideas are really jobs: "write the permit letter", "call the caretaker". Press the clock button at the bottom of a card and give it a date, and that card becomes a to-do — a done tick appears next to it, and the date turns red when it has passed, amber when it is today.

A date is never required. That is deliberate: the strength of ideas is that they are allowed to be untidy. If you never use dates the page stays exactly as it was — no tick, no filter row.

As soon as one card has a date, three filters appear above the wall: To-dos, Overdue and Due today, each with its count. Press one and the cards are ordered by date rather than by the order you dragged them into; the nearest job sits on top. It combines with the project filter, so "the overdue jobs of the Ahrida project" is one glance.

To remove a date, press the same button and clear the box. The card goes back to being a plain idea, and the tick disappears with it.

Step 7

Scripts

A script is its own record, not a field on the project. The reason is practical: the project row goes to the cloud whole on every deadline change, and if the script lived inside it, an old copy on your phone could overwrite what you wrote on your desktop.

The script window, six steps

1. Which ideas? Every idea, searchable, multi-select.
2. Which projects? Multi-select again — one script can serve several.
3. Title. With an "AI writes it" button that suggests a title from the ideas you picked.
4. Drive. Pull text in from Google Drive, or push your text back to it.
5. What should the AI write? A roomy brief box. Ctrl/Cmd+Enter runs it.
6. The script itself. Bold, headings and lists; a preview button shows how the marks render.

The moment there is text in the box, the project's "Script" step ticks itself.

Step 8

AI: Gemini's free tier

The AI in Shootboard runs on your own Google Gemini key. There is no AI subscription behind the app; the request goes straight from your browser to Google. Three consequences, all in your favour:

• The cost is yours, not ours. Stay inside Google's free tier and you pay nothing.
• Your text does not pass through us. Your script never touches a Shootboard server.
• The limit is your limit. You decide how much you use.

Getting a key

1. Sign in to Google AI Studio with your Google account.
2. "Create API key". You get a string starting with AIza… or AQ.….
3. In Shootboard, open AI (Gemini) from the left rail, paste the key, hit "Test the connection", save.

Where the key lives

By default, only on the device you typed it into, in that browser's storage. If you do not want to be asked again on your phone, tick "Keep this key in my account" in the AI window: it is written to your own account row (only you can read it) and your other devices pull it down at sign-in. That box is off by default — a key is a tap on your wallet, and it is not copied anywhere you did not ask for. "Remove key" deletes the account copy too.

While the AI works the button locks and counts the seconds — so "is it working or is it stuck" never comes up. It will not write over text you already have without asking. Afterwards, "undo" brings your old text back.

Step 9

Calendar and entries

An entry is a single post. Every entry carries two independent labels: what it is (Reel, Short, video, story, carousel, text post, poll) and where it goes (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn). They are separate on purpose: the same shoot goes out as a Reel on Instagram and a Short on YouTube.

The same plan has month, week, day and table views. Press and hold an entry to drag it to another day — with a mouse or a finger.

Week view on a phone: seven days do not fit on a phone screen, so the grid scrolls sideways on its own. While you scroll, the hour column stays put, so you always know which hour you are looking at. Opening the week view takes you straight to today — you do not start on Monday and scroll right. Your scroll position is kept: opening and closing an entry does not throw you back to the start.

Titles and descriptions in several languages

YouTube carries a title and a description in several languages on one video, and shows each viewer the one in their own language. In the entry window, if the platform is YouTube and the type is long-form video or Shorts, a language strip appears above the fields.

Press a tab and the four fields the viewer actually sees — video title, description, tags and cover text — switch to that language's text. A green dot on a tab means something has been written in it. "+ Add a language" adds one; the cross next to a tab removes it.

In the calendar the entry carries a small stamp such as TR EN, so you can tell which posts have their translations ready without opening them.

The ✨ button translates. If the main language has text, it translates that — it will not write a second, different text for the same video. If the main language is empty, it writes from scratch in that language.

When you upload, you paste these into the video's Subtitles / Translations section in YouTube Studio. Shootboard does not upload for you; it prepares.

The "Posted / Scheduled" tick

You tick this after you publish. Shootboard does not listen to the platforms; we say so plainly, because this is exactly where a wrong expectation goes off.

Time zones

Every entry carries its own time zone, so a post planned for another country makes it clear which clock the time refers to. The calendar marks it too.

Step 10

Caption templates

The same two lines you put under every post — the subscribe line, the links, the signature — so you do not retype them. The model in one sentence: one general text, and optionally per-platform exceptions.

• The general text goes into every caption.
• If you wrote a special text for one platform, only that platform gets it; the rest keep taking the general one.

You enter your handles once (@yourname) and the template uses them.

Step 11

Reminders and calendar subscription

If you have entered deadlines, Shootboard can warn you. Two channels:

• Browser notification. When you open the app, today's and overdue steps come through. That is why it asks for permission.
• Calendar subscription (.ics). Adds your deadlines to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook as a subscription. This is the stronger one: your phone's calendar reminds you even when Shootboard is closed.

The subscription address is a random token long enough not to be guessed; hit "refresh" and the old address dies and a new one is born.

You choose which steps you want warning about: the day before, on the day, once overdue.

Step 12

Importing from a spreadsheet

If you work in a spreadsheet today, you should be able to move without emptying your hands. "Import" in the footer understands text copied out of CSV, Google Sheets, Excel and Notion.

1. Copy the rows, header row included.
2. Paste into the import window.
3. Shootboard guesses the columns (date, time, platform, title, type, project, posted) — correct it by hand where the guess is wrong.
4. The preview shows what is about to come in. Then you confirm.

It reads most date formats: 2026-09-10, 10.09.2026, 22 September 2026, September 10, 2026. If you gave a project name and a project by that name exists, the entry is linked to it.

Step 13

The shareable link

To show an editor or a client what is going out this week, you do not need a screenshot. You can generate a read-only link. Whoever opens it only reads: no account, nothing to change.

The link carries the calendar only: date, time, type, platform, title, whether it went out, and the project name. Captions, hashtags and AI briefs are deliberately left out — those are your working notes.

Close the link and the file is deleted; the address dies with it.

Step 14

Backups and your data

Your work sits in three places, in this order on purpose:

1. Your browser. Every change is written here first. It works with no internet.
2. The cloud (Supabase). If you are signed in, changes go up; your other devices read them down.
3. An automatic backup. Once a day, when you open the app, a copy of everything is written to your own folder. The last seven days are kept. You do not have to do anything. The account window lists the days; tap one to restore it.

There is a manual backup too: "Export Backup" in the footer downloads everything as one file — calendar, projects, places, ideas, scripts, templates. "Restore Backup" reads it back and merges: what is in the file is added, where a record already exists the file wins, and nothing you have now is deleted. Open an old backup by mistake and you do not lose today's work.

Step 15

Account, privacy, deletion

The only reason to have an account is so your work moves between devices. Two ways in: Google in one tap, or email and a password. Forget the password and you ask for a sign-in link — nobody gets locked out.

The Your account window in the left rail holds: sign out, change password, the list of automatic backups, the export, and delete your account.

Deleting cannot be undone, so the button stays disabled until you type your own email address. When you do, your calendar, projects, ideas, scripts, places, settings and automatic backups are deleted from the server.

The details are in privacy and terms of use.