Where it all started
I work in animation production for games. At any given time we can have dozens of animation assets in progress — each going through multiple rounds of review and revision with outsource teams. For a long time my workflow was embarrassingly basic: open Notepad, write comments, manually find the right folder, dump in the text along with some screenshots. Multiply that by 80+ weapons and you get pure chaos.
At some point I thought: enough, it's time to build a proper tool. That's how Feedback Like A Boss was born.
The original idea was dead simple — press a button, a document gets created with the right name in the right folder, ready to edit. I built the first prototype in a day. Already a win.
How the program grew
But then the most interesting part started — I began using it in real work and discovering what was still missing. First I added a "Merge All" button. Then feedbacks got their own subfolder. Then came importing external files, screenshots, videos. Then a trash bin with restore functionality.
A few days in I already had a full-blown project manager with multiple document types — feedbacks, meeting notes, personal notes, tasks. Each type gets its own color so you can tell at a glance what's what.
The timeline — the coolest part
At some point I came up with timeline mode. On the left — a list of animations, on the right — a time axis showing when each feedback was created. Click a marker — open the document. You see the whole picture of the project at once.
Then I remembered how the time range slider works in Maya. You can drag the edges to change the playback range. I wanted something like that for navigating through time. We built it. Then added double-click — so the slider snaps to the full range and back. A small thing, but it made working with it so much smoother.
The details that matter
When you build a tool for yourself, you start noticing little things that nobody ever bothers fixing in standard software. I removed all confirmation dialogs like "File created — click OK." I can already see that it was created. Why click OK? Gone.
Added document preview on hover with Ctrl held down. Hover over a file — you see the first 20–30 words. No need to open the file just to know what's inside. Card pinning — right-click, "Pin" — the card flies to the top. Card grouping, like groups in Telegram. Collapse a group and it's out of the way.
Thumbnails and video preview
The last thing I added was thumbnail mode for media files. Instead of a card with a plain icon — an actual preview image. For videos, it's the first frame. And more than that: hover over a video card and the video starts playing right inside the thumbnail. You can scrub through it by moving the mouse left and right, like in a proper media manager. The technically trickiest part — but the end result is genuinely satisfying to use.
Two months later
Over roughly two months, the program went from "create a document in a folder" to a full project manager. I originally built it for animation production, but it works for any project where there are tasks, folders with files, and people who need to give notes — VFX, design, 3D modeling, architecture, or anywhere the work revolves around folders and content.
Feedback Like A Boss is completely free. Download it, try it, and let me know what you think.