Group related briefs into a hierarchy that mirrors how your team plans — epics, workstreams, quarters, or however you organize work.
Initiatives let you organize briefs into a tree structure so your team can see how individual projects connect to larger goals. Each initiative has a title, description, icon, health indicator, development state, and metadata sidebar, and can contain sub-initiatives or linked briefs.
The tree view gives you a bird's-eye picture of how work rolls up. Click any node to see its details, or expand the tree to trace a brief back to the initiative it belongs to.
Open the Initiatives tab — Navigate to Initiatives in your workspace sidebar.
Create an initiative — Click "New Initiative" to create a top-level node. Give it a title and optional description using the built-in editor. Choose an icon from the icon picker to visually distinguish it in the tree.
Build the hierarchy — Drag initiatives to nest them under a parent, or create child initiatives directly from the tree. There is no depth limit.
Link briefs — Associate existing briefs with an initiative. An initiative can have multiple linked briefs.
Assign ownership — Add an assignee directly from the list view or from the initiative detail page so every initiative has a clear owner.
Set dates and track progress — Add optional start and target dates from the detail page. Set the development state (Draft, Refining, Shipping, Shipped) to communicate where the work stands. Use the health indicator (On Track, At Risk, Off Track, Not Started) to flag how things are going. The detail page also has a status selector (Planned, Active, Completed, Archived) for broader workflow tracking.
View metadata — Select any initiative to open the metadata sidebar. It shows the title, description, linked briefs, assignee, dates, state, health, and sub-initiatives at a glance.
Tree view: Expand and collapse the hierarchy to focus on the level you care about. The tree uses drag-and-drop for reorganization.
Persistent tree state: Hamster remembers your expand/collapse state in the tree so you can return to the same working view without resetting the hierarchy.
Card view: Switch to a card grid for a flatter view of your initiatives. Cards show the icon, state badge, health indicator, owner avatar, and target date.
Icon picker: Choose from 20 icons to visually distinguish initiatives in the tree and card views. The default is the target icon. Click the icon next to any initiative title to change it.
Health indicators: Flag how an initiative is tracking with On Track (green), At Risk (amber), Off Track (red), or Not Started (gray). Click the health badge in the list or card view to update it.
State badges: Track development progress with Draft (gray), Refining (fuchsia), Shipping (violet), or Shipped (emerald). State is separate from status — status tracks the broader workflow lifecycle (Planned, Active, Completed, Archived), while state tracks where the actual work stands.
Target dates: Set optional start and target dates on any initiative. The target date appears in list and card views with urgency coloring — red when past due, amber when approaching, gray otherwise.
Display properties: Toggle which columns appear in the list view. Owner, target date, state, and health are all shown by default and can be individually hidden.
Brief search: Search for briefs to link from the initiative detail view. Results filter as you type.
Metadata sidebar: Each initiative shows a sidebar with its description, linked briefs, dates, state, health, and position in the hierarchy.
Assignee visibility: Initiative lists include assignees so accountability stays visible without opening each initiative.
Role-based access: Creating and managing initiatives requires the initiatives.manage permission. Team members with viewer roles can browse the tree but cannot make changes.
Realtime updates: Changes to the initiative tree are broadcast to all connected users in real time.