Why We Built CodeBake: Let AI do the Busy Work

My name is Ben Sharpe, and I've been using project management tools professionally for over thirty years. Basecamp, Jira, Trello, Asana, Linear, Notion — I've tried them all. And for most of that time, I've had the same two frustrations: spending too much time updating tickets instead of doing actual work, and enduring bespoke "workflows" that end up requiring more meetings to manage.

It got worse recently. Every week, I found myself dreading the same ritual: updating task statuses, writing summaries of work completed, synthesizing progress reports — all to keep stakeholders and project managers in the loop. The tools were supposed to help me work. Instead, they became work themselves.

That frustration is what led our team at MisfitLabs to build CodeBake.

The Flexibility Trap

Most project management tools sell flexibility as a feature. You can customize everything! Add columns! Create workflows! But flexibility without constraint is just rope to hang yourself with.

On a recent Asana project, the client had built what started as a simple kanban board — To Do, In Progress, Review, Done. Reasonable enough. But then they needed a way for engineers to flag questions for stakeholders. So they added a "Questions" column. Then they split the To Do column into "To Do Backend" and "To Do Frontend." Soon the board had seven columns, and our weekly meetings became painful exercises in reconstructing what actually happened.

The problem wasn't Asana. The problem was that humans had to manually shuttle cards around to communicate state — state that the work itself already knew.

The Obvious Question Nobody Was Asking

Here's what struck me: AI tools had already become indispensable for the actual work. I use Claude Code and other AI agents daily. They help me write code. They generate documentation better than most engineers ever will. They understand context, synthesize information, and produce clear summaries.

So why was I still manually typing status updates?

If AI can help me build a feature, why can't it tell the project management system that the feature is built? If it can write documentation, why can't it write the commit summary that goes on the task card? The AI already knows what's happening. It's right there, watching me work, helping me work. The only thing missing was a way for it to talk to the project board.

What CodeBake Actually Does

CodeBake is a project management system with a built-in MCP server. If you're not familiar, MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard that lets AI agents — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and others — connect to external tools and services. It's how your local AI assistant can read files, run commands, and interact with APIs.

With CodeBake's MCP server, your AI agent becomes a first-class participant in project management. It can query task details, understand what you're working on, and push updates back to the board — automatically, as you work. When you mark something ready for review, the system already has a summary of what was done because the AI wrote it along the way.

No more Friday afternoon dread. No more "let me update the tickets before standup." The work documents itself.

What Changed

The difference isn't subtle. Meetings with clients and stakeholders are shorter now — and more focused. We talk about decisions that need to be made, not about reconstructing what happened last week. Our engineers spend more time building features and less time writing reports about building features.

That's where the joy comes from. Not from some magical interface or clever feature, but from removing the busywork we'd all been doing for years without realizing we could stop.

The Philosophy Behind the Tool

CodeBake is built on a simple belief: project management should be a byproduct of work, not a separate activity. Engineers shouldn't have to context-switch into "reporting mode." The information stakeholders need — what's done, what's in progress, what's blocked — already exists in the flow of development. It just needs to be captured and surfaced.

AI makes this possible in a way it never was before. AI agents are already embedded in how many of us work — they understand the context. CodeBake just gives them somewhere useful to put that understanding.

If you're tired of updating tickets, maybe it's time to stop. Let the AI do it.

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