Sprints with clients in the loop, PR reviews that don't leak internal discussion, deployment notes the client can see — without surfacing the WIP code review or the architecture debate. One workspace, two audiences, real boundaries.
Free during beta · No credit card · Invite your team in 30 seconds
Most engineering-focused PM tools (Linear, Jira, Shortcut) assume one team and one audience — your internal engineering org. They're optimized for the work, not for the relationship with the client paying for the work. So when a dev shop tries to use them, the choice is binary: either invite the client into the full backlog (where they'll see your internal estimates, your refactor debates, and the issue titled "why is this code from 2021 still here") or keep the client out and write them weekly status emails from scratch.
And the opposite move — using a client-friendly PM tool like Basecamp or Notion — drops too much of the engineering shape. No real sprints, no PR linking, no environment-aware deployment notes.
Workhouse takes the middle path: per-task visibility, agency-shaped data model, integrations with the engineering tools you already use.
The work happens on the task. The conversation, the approval, the version history — all in one place. No second tool to keep in sync.
Each sprint has a public face (committed scope, deliverables) and an internal face (estimates, internal debates, refactor work). The client sees what's shipping; your team sees how it's shipping.
Link a GitHub PR to a task. The client sees the deliverable was reviewed and merged. They don't see the internal review thread, the test failures, or the "this is a hack but it works" comments.
Staging deploys are internal-visible. Production deploys are client-visible. The release note your client gets is the polished version of what your engineers wrote during the deploy.
Your team can argue about whether to use Postgres or DynamoDB on the same task the client is watching the deliverable on. The argument is flagged Internal. The client sees only the decision and the outcome.
Bug reports the client submits land in your queue. Your team triages, links the relevant PR, and ships the fix. The client sees the report, the status, and the deploy — not the internal severity debate.
For dev shops working with regulated clients (fintech, health, gov), the immutable audit log is included on every workspace. Decision history is preserved permanently.
A sketch of how the tool wants to be used.
Sprint kickoff. You've groomed the backlog internally over the past week. Client-visible scope goes live: 6 stories committed for the sprint, dependencies noted. Internal estimates and risk flags stay where they should.
Mid-sprint, an unexpected refactor surfaces. Your tech lead writes a candid internal note about the trade-off. The team agrees to take the slip. The client sees the new ETA without the engineering autopsy.
Two stories ship to production. Deployment notes auto-populate from the merged PRs and get filtered through the visibility flag: client gets a release note, your team sees the deploy diagnostics.
Sprint demo. Status report drafted from real activity: 5 of 6 stories shipped, 1 carried over with explanation, demo links live. The client comes to the call already informed.
Linear and Jira are for one team and one audience — your engineering org. Workhouse is for two audiences — your engineering team AND your client. Most dev shops end up running Linear for engineering + something else (Notion, email, Slack) for client comms, and dealing with the sync problem. Workhouse collapses both into one workspace.
GitHub linking is live — paste a PR or issue URL and Workhouse renders the preview. Bidirectional sync (issue-task auto-link, PR status mirroring) is on the near-term roadmap. GitLab support follows.
Lightweight incident tracking, yes. Full-blown PagerDuty replacement, no. Pair with your existing on-call tool for production incidents; use Workhouse to track follow-up work and client-visible communication about the incident.
Workhouse doesn't track time natively. Most dev shops pair Workhouse with Harvest, Toggl, or a similar tool. The audit log captures when work happened; the time tracker captures how long it took.