coaching.toys — documentation

A collection of small, fast tools for people who run workshops: coaches, mentors, Scrum Masters, facilitators, trainers. Every tool does one thing, opens instantly, and is readable from the back of the room.

The idea
Principles
Things every tool shares
The tools

The idea

A facilitator standing in front of a room does not want to install anything, sign in, or learn an interface. They want a big countdown on the wall in five seconds, or a random name, or a way to split twelve people into groups of three without doing arithmetic in their head while everyone watches.

So: a catalogue of single-purpose tools, each on its own page, each usable within seconds of arriving. Nothing to configure before it works. Nothing that holds your workshop hostage if the wifi drops out mid-session.

The tools are useful in the room and useful before it — several of them are as much preparation aids as live instruments.

Principles

These are constraints the site is built under, not aspirations.

No account, ever. Nothing to sign up for. No login screen stands between you and a timer.

No cookies, no tracking, no third parties. Not a single request leaves your browser at runtime — not for analytics, not even for fonts. There is nothing to consent to, so you are never asked. The privacy page says this in plain language and it is literally true.

Your data stays on your device. Names, agendas and settings are kept in the browser's own local storage. They are never uploaded because there is nowhere to upload them to: the site is static files with no backend. If storage is unavailable — private browsing, for instance — the tools still work, they just forget between visits.

Shareable setups. Where it makes sense, a tool's configuration lives in the page address, so a link carries the setup with it and survives a reload.

Works in a plain browser. HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No framework ships to you. Each tool loads only its own code, so opening one tool never downloads the other twenty-four.

Accessible as a build requirement. The target is WCAG 2.2 AA and it is checked automatically, not hoped for: every colour is verified for contrast on each build. Every tool works from the keyboard, has visible focus, and honours your system's "reduce motion" setting. Colour never carries meaning on its own — confirm and abort always have a label too.

Two languages, fully. German and English throughout, not just the menus. Switching language keeps you on the page you were on.

Credit where it is due. Any tool built on someone else's named method — Liberating Structures and the like — says so in the tool itself, links to the original, and names its licence.

Fullscreen everywhere. Every tool can fill the screen, so browser and operating system chrome disappear when a projector is involved.

Things every tool shares

Fullscreen. The button at the top right of any tool. Escape leaves again. On an iPhone, where the browser offers no true fullscreen, the tool covers the whole page instead and the same button brings you back.

Names go in a text box, one per line. Every tool that needs people works the same way. Paste a list from anywhere; blank lines are ignored.

It remembers. Reopen a tool and your last names, durations and settings are there. Each tool notes below what it keeps.

Keyboard. Space starts and pauses anything with a clock. Arrow keys move between phases where a tool has them. Shortcuts never fire while you are typing in a text field.

Announcements. State changes are announced to screen readers as they happen.

Timeboxing

Timer

A big countdown for timeboxes — readable from the back of the room.

How to use it. Pick a preset or type the minutes, then Start. Space starts and pauses too. The presets and the minute field go inert while the clock runs, so a stray tap cannot silently reset a timer mid-exercise. When time is up the digits turn red and bounce. In fullscreen the numbers grow to fill the screen.

The countdown is anchored to a real clock time rather than counted up frame by frame, so it stays honest if you switch tabs or your laptop sleeps.

The address updates as you change the duration, so a link like .../timer/#25 opens a 25-minute timer directly. Remembers: the last duration.

Common scenarios.

Silent writing. Five minutes on the wall so nobody has to ask how long is left.
A timeboxed discussion where the agreement was ten minutes and the room needs to see that it was ten minutes.
A prepared link. Put #5 on a bookmark and your standard timebox is one click away.

Interval timer

Repeated rounds with a break between — it runs itself, so nobody has to click.

How to use it. Set the number of rounds, minutes per round, and the break between them in seconds. Start once and leave it: work and break alternate on their own, announcing "Switch!" between rounds. Skip jumps to the next phase, → does the same. Remembers: rounds, work length, break length.

Common scenarios.

Speed feedback. Six rounds of three minutes with thirty seconds to move between them.
Station work. Four stations, eight minutes each, and the tool does the shepherding.
Focus sprints in a working session, breaks included.

Back at …

The time you resume, large on the wall, counting down.

How to use it. Type the time you will resume, or press one of the "+" buttons to add minutes to now. The resume time shows large, with a countdown underneath. The important part: it survives a reload, so you can close the laptop, take the break, and find the same break still running when you come back. Remembers: when the break ends.

Common scenarios.

Coffee break in a full-day workshop — the wall answers "when are we starting again?" so you do not have to.
Lunch, where the exact resume time matters more than the length.
A hybrid session, where remote participants can see the resume time on the shared screen.

Session runner

Your whole agenda as timeboxes — it advances on its own and shows when you'll finish.

How to use it. Write the agenda one item per line with the minutes at the end:

Arrive 5
Silent writing 10
Discussion 20
Next steps 10

Start, and it walks the agenda, showing the current item, what is next, and the projected finish time. If an item overruns, the finish time updates — which is the honest signal you need before deciding what to cut. Space pauses, → skips, ← goes back. Remembers: the agenda.

Common scenarios.

Running a retrospective to a plan without watching the clock yourself.
A workshop you designed in advance — paste the agenda in, start, and facilitate instead of timekeeping.
Showing a client where the time will actually go, before agreeing to it.

Round the circle

Everyone gets the same slot, one after another, advancing on its own.

How to use it. Names in the box, seconds per person, optionally shuffle the order. Start, and it moves from person to person by itself, showing who is up and who is next, and marking anyone who runs over. Space pauses, → and ← move by hand. Remembers: names, seconds, shuffle preference.

Common scenarios.

A daily stand-up that has been drifting to twenty minutes.
A check-out round where everyone gets sixty seconds, fairly.
A large group where the same three people usually talk longest.

Speaking time

Who has held the floor, and who hasn't spoken at all? Tap, let it run, make it visible.

How to use it. Names in the box, then tap whoever starts speaking — their clock runs and everyone else's stops. Number keys work too. Totals accumulate across the session with each person's share as a percentage, and anyone who has not spoken at all is called out explicitly. Remembers: names and totals.

Common scenarios.

A retrospective where two voices dominate — showing the split at the end says more than any intervention during.
Team coaching on participation, with the data gathered rather than asserted.
Your own facilitation, checked afterwards: how much of that did you talk?

Decision-making

Who's next?

Picks someone at random — and can strike them off before the next round.

How to use it. Names in the box, then Pick. Space picks too. Strike the person just picked and they are excluded from the next draws; bring everyone back when the round is over. The tool tells you when only one person is left, and when everyone has had a turn. Remembers: names, and who is struck off.

Common scenarios.

Who reports back from group work, without volunteers always volunteering.
Order of presentations, drawn in the room so nobody arranged it.
A round where everyone speaks once — strike each person as they go, and the tool tracks who is left.

Coin flip

Two options, no arguments left. Label the sides and flip.

How to use it. Label the two sides — they default to Heads and Tails — and flip. Space flips too. A running tally of results is kept and can be cleared. Each side is exactly 50%. Remembers: your labels and the history.

Common scenarios.

Two equally good options and a discussion that has stopped producing new arguments.
Who goes first between two teams.
Deliberately surfacing a preference: flip, and notice whether you are disappointed by the result. That reaction is the actual answer.

Dice

Roll for turn order, group splits, and decisions nobody wants to make.

How to use it. Choose how many dice and how many sides, then Roll. Space rolls. Individual results and the total are shown; the total appears once you have rolled. The configuration is kept in the address, so a link opens the same setup. Remembers: count and sides.

Common scenarios.

Assigning turn order in a game-based exercise.
Randomly choosing a table number or a station.
Any workshop game that needs dice and nobody brought any.

Planning poker

Capture the estimates and surface the outliers — they are the ones who talk first.

How to use it. Who is estimating, one per line. Optionally name what is being estimated. Choose a scale: Fibonacci, T-shirt sizes, or doubling. Then click the card each person shows. Clicking again undoes it. The summary reports agreement, or names the lowest and highest and says those two talk first. "Next estimate" clears the values and keeps the roster. Remembers: names, scale, story, estimates.

Common scenarios.

Refinement, as the record of what was shown, so the conversation goes to the spread rather than the average.
A distributed team where one person runs the board on the shared screen.
Teaching estimation — the tool makes the point that the outliers hold the information.

Fist of five

Take a 1-to-5 consent vote — and surface the people who still need to be heard.

How to use it. Optionally write the proposal and how many people are voting. Ask the room, then count the hands in with the 1–5 buttons, or press keys 1 to 5. Backspace or Undo takes back the last one. The chart fills as votes come in and the verdict follows: consent when nobody is below 3, wholehearted agreement when everyone is high, and otherwise it names how many people are blocking. Remembers: the proposal, the expected count, the votes.

Common scenarios.

Testing a proposal before committing to it — cheaper than discovering the objection afterwards.
A working agreement where you need to know it is genuinely carried.
Any decision where "no objections?" met silence and you do not trust the silence.

Decision bracket

Too many options? Weigh just two at a time until one is left standing.

How to use it. Options one per line, then start. You are shown two at a time and pick one; keys 1 and 2 work. With an odd number, someone advances unopposed and the tool says so. Undo steps back a comparison. An interrupted bracket resumes where you left it after a reload. Remembers: the options and the state of play.

Common scenarios.

A backlog of eight ideas where the room cannot hold eight things at once but can always answer "this or that?".
Picking a team name without a shouting match.
Narrowing a longlist to the one thing you will actually do next.

Priority sort

Compare just two at a time — get the whole list back, properly ordered.

How to use it. Options one per line, then start sorting. For each pair, answer which matters more, or declare them equal; keys 1 and 2 work. The result is the full list in order, which you can copy to the clipboard. Undo steps back. Remembers: options and sort state.

Common scenarios.

Ordering a backlog by something other than who argued hardest.
Personal prioritisation when everything feels urgent.
Making a team's implicit ranking explicit so it can be discussed.

The difference from the bracket: the bracket gives you a winner, this gives you the whole ordered list.

Decision matrix

Options against weighted criteria — dry, traceable, and occasionally exactly right.

How to use it. Options on the left, one per line. Criteria on the right with their weight at the end:

Cost 3
Speed 2
Risk 3
Fun 1

Then score each option on each criterion from 1 to 5 — 5 is good for this option, 1 is bad. Weighted totals compute as you go. The summary names who is ahead, or reports a tie honestly rather than inventing a winner. It also tells you how many cells are still empty. Remembers: options, criteria, scores.

Common scenarios.

Build versus buy, where you will have to justify the decision later.
Choosing a supplier or tool, with the criteria agreed before the scoring starts — that is where the real conversation is.
Any decision that needs a paper trail more than it needs speed.

Impact / effort matrix

Four quadrants instead of an order. Shows what pays off now — and what is merely expensive.

How to use it. Options one per line, and they appear in a pile. Place each one in a quadrant by clicking it and then the quadrant, or by pressing 1 to 4; 0 puts it back in the pile. Escape cancels. The quadrants are quick wins, big bets, incidental, and time sinks. The summary counts what landed where — and tells you when nothing at all is a quick win, which is a finding. Remembers: options and placements.

Common scenarios.

After a brainstorm, to separate the achievable from the ambitious.
Planning a quarter, so big bets are chosen deliberately rather than drifted into.
Improvement backlogs from a retro, where the quick wins are what keeps faith in the retro.

Retrospective

Dot voting

Hand out dots and tally them live — with a budget, a ranking, and an undo.

How to use it. Options one per line, how many people, how many dots each. Then click an option to give it a dot as people call them out; number keys work. The budget is tracked and enforced, and it tells you how many dots are left. Reveal shows the ranking, including ties. Undo takes back the last dot; reset clears the votes but keeps the options. Remembers: people, dots per person, options, counts.

Common scenarios.

Choosing retro topics from a board of a dozen.
Prioritising ideas at the end of a workshop, with the budget visible so nobody quietly spends more.
A remote session where physical stickers are not an option.

Rose, Thorn, Bud

Three questions, three timeboxes: what bloomed, what hurt, what could grow?

How to use it. Set the minutes per question and start. The three phases — Rose, Thorn, Bud — come one at a time, each with its own prompt and clock. Space starts the clock, → and ← move between phases. Remembers: minutes per question.

Common scenarios.

A short retrospective that needs a shape but not a whole method.
A project debrief where "what hurt" needs its own protected time.
A one-on-one, working through the three questions together.

What? So What? Now What?

Three questions, three timeboxes: observe, then interpret, then act.

How to use it. Minutes per question, then start. Three phases: what happened, what does it mean, what do we do now — each with a prompt and clock. Space, → and ← as elsewhere. Remembers: minutes per question.

Common scenarios.

Debriefing an exercise or a simulation, keeping observation separate from interpretation.
After an incident, so the room does not jump to solutions before agreeing on the facts.
Reviewing an experiment at the end of a sprint.

The separation is the entire point: most groups collapse all three into one conversation and end up arguing about conclusions while still disagreeing about what happened.

Reflection

Tools in this section are based on Liberating Structures. Each credits the method and links to the original inside the tool itself, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nine Whys

Ask "why" up to nine times to reach the real purpose behind the work.

How to use it. Set minutes per round and start. One person asks "why is that important to you?", the other answers; then you swap. Go deeper with ↑, change round with →, Space starts the clock. The tool tracks how many whys deep you are and tells you when you have reached the bottom. Remembers: minutes.

Common scenarios.

A team that has lost sight of why a piece of work exists.
Before writing a goal or a vision, to get past the first plausible answer.
Coaching one-on-one, where the fourth "why" is usually where it gets interesting.

1-2-4-All

Alone, then in pairs, then in fours, then everyone — revealed one phase at a time.

How to use it. Names one per line and optionally the question. Start, and the tool takes you through the phases, showing the groupings for each and running a clock per phase. Regroup mixes people differently. Odd numbers are handled — someone joins a three rather than being stranded. Remembers: prompt, names, groups.

Common scenarios.

A question everyone should think about before the loudest person frames it for the room.
A large group where a plenary discussion would let most people stay silent.
Gathering input you actually intend to use, rather than a discussion that circles.

15% Solutions

What can you do right now, with no new resources or permission? Solo first, then share.

How to use it. Minutes per step, then start. Two phases: find your 15% alone, then share and sharpen it in the group. → and ← move between them, Space starts the clock. Remembers: nothing beyond the current run.

Common scenarios.

A retro that keeps producing actions nobody can take because they all need someone else's approval.
After a frustrating discussion about things outside the team's control — this deliberately turns to what is inside it.
Closing a workshop with commitments people can actually keep.

Warm-ups

Split into groups

Splits the room into evenly sized groups — and mixes people up again next round.

How to use it. Names one per line. Choose whether you are setting the number of groups or the size of groups, then split. Space works too. The remainder is distributed sensibly rather than dumped on one group. Reshuffling for a later round actively avoids putting people together who have already worked together, and tells you whether it managed it. Remembers: names, mode, amount, round, and who has already been together.

Common scenarios.

Breakout groups where you want genuinely mixed tables, not the same cluster every time.
A workshop with several group phases, where the tool tracks the history so you do not have to.
World Café, moving between rounds.

Pair people up

Splits the room into random pairs — and remembers who has already worked together.

How to use it. Names one per line, then pair them up. With an odd number you choose in advance whether to make one group of three or let someone sit out. New rounds avoid repeat pairings. Remembers: names, mode, round, pairing history.

Common scenarios.

Pair exercises across several rounds, without the same two people finding each other every time.
Peer feedback, where fresh pairings matter.
Interview exercises, swapping partners each round.

Everyone meets everyone

A speed-networking schedule: every person meets every other person exactly once.

How to use it. Names one per line and minutes per round, then build the schedule. The tool tells you up front how many rounds it will take. Each round shows the pairings, with a clock per round; → advances, Space starts the time. With an odd number, one person sits out each round and it rotates so it is not always the same person. Remembers: nothing beyond the current schedule.

Common scenarios.

Speed networking at a meetup or a team event.
A new team meeting each other properly rather than in a name round.
Peer interviews where the point is that everybody talks to everybody.

The difference from Pair people up: that one gives you a random pairing per round, this one plans the whole tournament so the coverage is guaranteed.

Check-in

Weather check-in

How is the room arriving? From storm to sunshine — captured, person by person.

How to use it. Names one per line and optionally the question, which defaults to "How are you arriving today?". Then click the weather each person calls out — storm, rain, cloudy, sunny, brilliant. Clicking again undoes it. The tool tracks who has not checked in yet, and afterwards reports the mood — including naming how many people arrived stormy, which is the number worth noticing. Remembers: question, names, moods.

Common scenarios.

Opening a workshop, so the room's state is visible before you start.
A team's regular check-in, where the pattern across weeks is the interesting part.
Before a difficult conversation, to know what you are walking into.