Scenarios, snapshots & templates
What-if planning in shadow-planner — isolated scenarios, read-only snapshots as backups, reusable templates, and deep-cloning a plan to explore an alternative.
Three related concepts let you experiment without fear:
- A scenario is a complete, self-contained planning world — projects, epics, tasks, people, assignments. You always work inside exactly one active scenario.
- A snapshot is a read-only, point-in-time copy of a scenario. It never changes after it's taken; restoring one creates a new scenario, so the snapshot itself stays pristine.
- A template is a reusable blueprint. Promote any scenario to a template, then stamp out new scenarios from it — handy for repeating project structures.
What-if planning
To explore "what if we delay the launch by a month?" without touching your real plan, clone the scenario: a deep copy with all projects, epics, tasks and assignments duplicated. Rearrange the copy freely — by hand or by chat — and compare it against the original by switching between scenarios. Your baseline is never at risk.
The chat assistant is scoped to the active scenario, and each scenario keeps its own conversation — so the "what-if world" even has its own chat history.
Creating a scenario
The scenario creation wizard has three steps — Details → Data Source → Import — with these starting points:
- Empty Scenario — a blank slate.
- From Template — start from one of your templates.
- CSV File — import existing data; see Import & export.
Snapshots as your safety net
Some operations can't be undone with Ctrl+Z — restoring scenarios, bulk imports, materialising an AI plan. Take a snapshot before big moves and you can always get back. Snapshots (and exports) never include integration credentials or API keys.
Free tier note
The free tier includes one scenario, so cloning for what-if planning is the main reason planners upgrade. The €4,99 one-time purchase unlocks unlimited scenarios — see License & upgrades.