Lisbon Countdown: One App for Every Thread of a Big Move

Moving abroad sounds like one big thing. In practice it is four separate projects running in parallel, each with its own hard deadline that does not care about the others. Marek had thirty days to cancel his PGNiG gas contract (thirty days' notice, not a day less), get his cat Nero vaccinated inside the exact window the EU rabies rule demands, decide what fits inside Ryanair's 20 kg checked cap before he even touches a suitcase, and arrange for his sister Ola to catch his post while he gets settled in Alfama. No single spreadsheet or reminders app laid those four threads out day by day. So we built one.

Lisbon Countdown opens pre-seeded with Marek's real scenario. The flight date is set. The countdown is live. Every task is already anchored to the day it needs to happen, not just floating in a list. Try the app in the frame below, then read on for why each piece of it works the way it does.

The deadline most movers miss: Nero's EU passport

EU pet import rules are unforgiving on one point: the rabies vaccination must be administered at least 21 days before the animal crosses the border. Book it on day 22 and you are fine. Book it on day 20 and Nero stays in Poland. That is not a rule that lives naturally in anyone's head, and it is not the kind of thing a generic calendar reminder handles well because the date is relative to your departure, not to a fixed point in the year.

The Cat Passport thread in Lisbon Countdown anchors the vaccination task to the correct day automatically. Once the flight date is set, the app works backward and places the vet appointment exactly where it needs to be. The thread also includes the microchip check (must precede the vaccination) and the health certificate issued within ten days of travel. You can see each step with its own day marker and a simple checkbox. Tap one done and the thread's progress bar moves. Nothing is left to date arithmetic done at midnight.

Gas contracts, mail redirection, and the problem with parallel threads

The PGNiG termination notice is a different kind of urgency. It is not a deadline you can recover from missing by rescheduling, it is a contractual notice period, and if you send it a week late you are paying for gas in a flat you no longer live in. The Gas thread puts this task on day one, or as close to day one as the notice period demands, so the first thing Marek sees when he opens the app is not a packing reminder but a form to fill out and post.

Mail redirection is quieter but compounds over months. Ola's address goes into the Poland Post form and then it is done, but only if someone remembers to do it before the last trip to the post office. The Mail thread groups that task with the bank and insurance address updates that need to happen in the same window, so they travel together rather than surfacing one by one as Marek realises each one separately.

The point of grouping tasks by thread rather than by date is that it lets you think in projects. When you tap into the Cat Passport thread you are in cat-passport mode, not toggling between vet appointments and suitcase weights. The day anchors keep everything properly sequenced; the threads keep your head in one context at a time.

Packing for a budget airline is a design problem

Ryanair's 20 kg checked bag limit is a constraint, not a suggestion, and it rewards people who plan their packing in advance over people who weigh the bag at 11 pm the night before. The Packing thread in Lisbon Countdown is less about reminders and more about a deliberate sequence: decide what the non-negotiables are (the things that must fly rather than be shipped or sold), estimate their weight, and fill the rest of the allowance from there.

The thread ships with the key decision points already laid out as tasks. Which items go in checked luggage, which go carry-on, which get sold or left behind. Each task gets its own day marker because packing done with a week to spare is a very different experience from packing done the night before. The app does not weigh your bags for you, but it does prompt the thinking early enough that the 20 kg cap becomes a plan rather than a panic.

You can add your own tasks to any thread by tapping the plus at the bottom of that section. If Marek needs a reminder to drop his furniture at a second-hand shop, or to return his library books, he can attach it to the right thread and pin it to the right day. The app opens with a real scenario but it is not rigid.

A countdown that tells you what to do today

The top of the screen shows two things: how many days until the flight, and the single most important task for today. Not a list of everything due this week, not a calendar view requiring interpretation, just the one thing that should not be skipped. That pinned task updates every day as the countdown moves.

Below it, the four threads show their progress as a bar alongside each heading. You can see at a glance whether the cat paperwork is ahead or behind relative to where the gas cancellation stands. On most days one thread will be moving faster than another, and that visibility is what lets you correct course before a thread falls critically behind.

Everything persists offline. The app does not require an account or a server. Marek can check it on the train, in the waiting room at the vet, or on the runway after the phone goes into flight mode. The state is local and it survives a restart.

Built from a one-line idea, shaped around one real move

This app started as a description of Marek's situation: one person, one cat, one budget flight, four overlapping deadlines, thirty days. From that the structure emerged, the threads, the day anchors, the pinned daily task, the offline persistence. It took an afternoon from idea to working app rather than weeks, which is the part that still surprises people when they first see it.

The value is not that it is clever software. The value is that it reflects a specific situation precisely enough to actually be useful. Generic moving checklists tell you to 'notify utilities.' This one tells you that PGNiG needs thirty days' notice and puts the task on your screen on the right day. That specificity is the difference between a list you read once and an app you open every morning.