Planner got task chats. Where should your personal todos live?

Microsoft has spent 2026 reshaping its task tools. As reported by Neowin, the Planner update brings task chats with rich text and mentions to basic plans, custom templates, and a project manager agent for Copilot-licensed users, while retiring Planner components in Loop pages and replacing the old comments experience. Planner tasks also appear inside the new Outlook through the To Do icon.

The direction is clear: team tasks are becoming conversations, attached to plans, discussed in threads, and increasingly summarised by agents. That is good for shared work. It also makes one question more pressing for everyone who uses these tools: where do your own todos go?

Shared tasks and personal tasks are different jobs

A Planner task belongs to a plan. Other people can see it, comment on it, assign it and report on it. That is exactly what you want for “migrate the billing system” and exactly what you do not want for “ask Jen whether the offsite is still on” or “book dentist”.

Personal tasks are small, private, often half-formed, and far more numerous. If they go into a team tool, they either clutter shared plans or end up in a private plan that you have to open, navigate and fill in. The friction is the problem, not the tool.

The capture moment does not belong in a team tool

Most personal tasks appear at the worst moment: in a meeting, mid-email, while coding. Team tools are optimised for organising and discussing, not for taking a line of text in two seconds without leaving the window you are in. That is a different design target, which we discussed in getting more out of Microsoft To Do and why not just use Microsoft To Do.

A layered setup that works

The setup that holds up for most people has two layers:

1. Capture, fast and private, for everything that crosses your mind.
2. Shared tools, for work that other people need to see.

During your daily or weekly review, anything from the capture layer that involves the team moves into Planner, a shared board or a ticket, written properly. The rest stays personal.

That is the layer Jot is built for. Ctrl + Shift + J, a line, and you are back in the meeting. A date becomes a reminder. Shared work goes where the team will see it, when you decide it is ready.

Watch the agent features

Agents that summarise plans and draft task updates are useful, and they depend on the tasks being in the shared system. That is fine for team work. For personal notes, be deliberate: anything you put in a shared tool may be read, summarised or surfaced by an assistant for someone else. Keeping private captures local avoids that question entirely.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.