Pinateca debuts with eight board types and free built-in chat

LIFE SCAPE, K.K. has launched Pinateca, a project management tool that puts eight board views, team chat, and AI-assisted board updates into its free plan. The product also ties meeting recordings to searchable minutes and connects with ChatGPT, Claude, Zapier, and n8n.

Why it matters: - Pinateca bundles core project management features into the free tier, including every board type and team chat. - The launch targets teams that currently split tasks, conversations, timelines, and meeting notes across multiple tools. - The product also gives teams a way to update boards through AI chat instead of switching apps or using an API token.

What happened: - LIFE SCAPE, K.K. announced the launch of Pinateca, a project management tool available in English and Japanese. - The product includes eight board types, built-in chat, and AI-assisted board editing. - Pinateca is available at Pinateca.

The details: - Users choose a board type when creating each board. - The eight board types are Kanban, Gantt chart, Calendar, List, Discussion, Grid, Timetable, and Resource. - The Grid, Timetable, and Resource boards are formats not offered by other major project management tools. - The free plan includes all board types and chat. - Workspace chat channels keep conversations separate by team, and each card also has its own comment thread. - Mentions, assignments, and due dates land in one inbox. - Files and videos can be added directly to messages. - The free plan includes up to 5 people, 10 boards, and 1 GB of storage. - The Standard plan costs $5 per user per month, or $4 billed yearly, and includes unlimited people and boards plus 20 GB of storage. - The Business plan costs $19 per user per month, or $15 billed yearly, and includes meeting recordings, automatic minutes, and 200 GB of storage. - A Timesheet add-on costs $9 per user per month, or $7 billed yearly, and adds work logs and reports for contractors. - Seats count members who can edit. View-only guests are free. - Workspaces are unlimited at no extra cost, and people and boards are counted across all of a customer’s workspaces.

Between the lines: - Pinateca is pitching against the common project-management model where advanced views and collaboration tools sit behind paid tiers. - The free-plan approach lowers the barrier for teams to test the workflow before committing. - The company is also making a bet that AI-native work management can be a product feature, not a separate integration layer. - Support for ChatGPT, claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and a public MCP endpoint suggests Pinateca is aiming for users who already work inside AI tools.

What's next: - Teams can attach meeting recordings to cards, and Pinateca will transcribe them, identify speakers, remove filler words, and generate minutes with key points, decisions, and next steps. - Search hits in transcripts can be played back from the exact moment they were said across a team’s workspaces. - The meeting-recording and automatic-minutes feature is included in the Business plan. - Pinateca also connects with Zapier and n8n, which expands automation options for teams and self-hosted setups. - Teams moving from Trello can import exported files and keep boards, cards, labels, and attachments, with imports not limited by the free plan’s board cap. - LIFE SCAPE, K.K. says development of Pinateca began in April 2026 and the product launched about five months later.

The bottom line: - Pinateca is entering the market as an all-in-one project tool that makes its most visible collaboration features available before payment, while leaning hard into AI and automation.