Quick answers, before you ask.

Click Get started and sign in with your GitHub account. There's no password to create — Heliostat uses GitHub OAuth so you can be running a cycle in a few seconds.

Free accounts don't require a credit card. You only enter billing details if and when you upgrade to Solo.

GitHub is the default sign-in. If your GitHub account uses a private @users.noreply.github.com email, Heliostat will ask you to confirm a real address so you can receive your daily check-in and billing emails.

Email/password sign-in is available from settings once you're in — useful as a backup if you ever lose access to your GitHub account.

No. Sign-in only reads your public profile (name, avatar, username) so we can address you correctly. Heliostat never writes to your repos and never reads source files.

Linking commits to scopes is opt-in — that's the separate Heliostat GitHub App covered below, and even then we only read commit metadata, not file contents.

Check spam first — the sender is [email protected]. If it's still missing, sign in again and we'll re-send from the email-setup screen. After three failed sign-ins your account is temporarily locked (Devise lockable); the unlock link is mailed to the same address.

Yes. Open Settings → Danger zone and choose Delete account. This wipes your projects, pitches, cycles, retrospectives, and any stored GitHub tokens. If you have an active Solo subscription, cancel it first from the billing portal so you aren't billed for the next period.

Free is $0 forever — one project, one active bet at a time, your most recent cycle in history, and limited AI questions. No card required.

Solo is $99/year (effectively $8.25/month) or $10/month. You unlock unlimited projects, full cycle history, custom AI personas, and unlimited Senior & Retro Coach questions.

Full breakdown on the pricing page.

The Free plan is the trial — it doesn't expire. Run a complete pitch → commit → build → cooldown cycle end-to-end, then upgrade if you want unlimited projects and the full retro history.

Payments are handled by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe's hosted checkout — Heliostat never sees or stores your card number.

You'll get a receipt by email after every successful charge.

Open Settings → Subscription and click Manage billing. That sends you to Stripe's billing portal where you can swap plans, update your card, or download invoices. Plan changes are prorated automatically.

Cancel from the same Stripe billing portal — Manage billing → Cancel plan. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your paid period; you keep Solo features until then.

After cancellation your account drops to Free. Your data stays — projects, pitches, retrospectives, and history aren't deleted. Solo-only features (extra projects, full history, custom personas) just lock again until you upgrade.

Stripe retries automatically over the next few days and emails you each time. Your subscription enters past_due — you keep access while we wait for a successful retry.

Update your card from the billing portal at any time to resolve it immediately. If retries keep failing, the subscription is canceled and your account drops to Free.

Reach out via feedback within 14 days of a charge and we'll refund it — no forms, no retention questions.

No. Heliostat is built for one person — no seats, no collaborators, no admin console. The flat Solo price covers everything one person needs.

When you connect a repo, Heliostat receives a webhook on every push and tries to match each commit to a scope on your hill chart. Matched commits show up under that scope; unmatched commits get flagged as unplanned work, which feeds your interruption percentage at retro time.

That's the whole job. We don't read source files, open PRs, or comment on anything.

Sign-in uses GitHub OAuth to identify who you are. The App is a separate install you grant per-repo (or per-org) so Heliostat can receive push events from those repos.

You can sign in without ever installing the App — you just won't get auto-linked commits.

Go to Projects → Track a GitHub repo and click Install the GitHub App. GitHub will ask which account to install on and which repos to grant access to — pick Only select repositories if you want to whitelist a few.

When you come back to Heliostat, the repos you authorized show up under Available repositories. Click Track next to the one you want and that becomes a project.

A few likely causes:

· You installed the App on a different GitHub account than the one you signed into Heliostat with. Sign in with the matching account, or install the App on the right one.
· You picked Only select repositories and didn't include the repo you wanted. Visit github.com/settings/installations and edit the access list.
· The repo list is cached. Hit Refresh from GitHub on the Projects page (rate-limited to once a minute).

Heliostat looks at the branch name and commit message. By convention, a branch like feat/auth maps to a scope named auth. You can also reference a scope by name in the commit message itself.

Anything we can't match cleanly is logged as unplanned work so you can decide at retro whether it was a real interruption or a missing scope.

Two options. From Heliostat: open the project and choose Stop tracking. We'll keep the historical data but stop ingesting new pushes.

From GitHub: go to github.com/settings/installations, open the Heliostat App, and either remove individual repos or uninstall the App entirely. Uninstalling stops all webhooks and revokes our access token immediately.

Yes. From Projects, choose Start a blank project. You'll move scopes on the hill chart manually and log unplanned work yourself — the rest of the Shape Up workflow is identical.

Open Settings — the GitHub installations section lists each install, the repo count, and a link straight to that install's settings page on GitHub. Revoke from there at any time.