Comparison

ProjectBoard vs The Abyss

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ProjectBoard

Features
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ProjectBoard โ€” projects, tasks, notes, and files in one place. Everything a project needs lives together: the tasks, the notes, the files, and the conversation. No more scattering one project across four apps. PLAN YOUR DAY, NOT JUST YOUR LIST Drag a task onto the calendar to block time for it. Let Plan My Day pack your tasks into the gaps you actually have free โ€” it reads your real calendar, so it schedules around meetings instead of pretending they don't exist. Start a focus session and work a block at a time. TASKS THAT MATCH HOW YOU THINK Subtasks for the steps. #tags across projects. Saved smart lists for the views you return to. An Inbox that catches anything you haven't sorted yet. WRITES THE BORING PARTS FOR YOU โ€” ON DEVICE Smart Fill turns a sentence into a task with the right date, project, and priority. Your Daily Brief tells you what matters this morning. Smart Inbox Triage sorts what piled up. Search understands what you meant, not just what you typed. It runs on your device. ON EVERY SCREEN YOU OWN A genuine Mac app โ€” split view, menu bar commands, keyboard shortcuts throughout. iPhone and iPad. An Apple Watch app for checking off work from your wrist. Home and Lock Screen widgets you can tap to complete a task. Shortcuts and voice for capture without opening anything. FILES WHERE YOU EXPECT THEM A ProjectBoard folder in Finder and the Files app, syncing both ways. Open documents straight in from Finder, or share them in from any app. Annotate with inline markup. BUILT FOR WORKING TOGETHER Share a project, chat alongside the work, and watch tasks and notes update live as your team moves. START FASTER Seven built-in project templates, or build your own with tasks that schedule themselves relative to your start date or deadline.

About

The Abyss

Features
Read full description

The Abyss is the iOS companion for Hermes - your self-hosted AI agent running on your own machine. Connect over your local network or Tailscale, send prompts, watch the agent think and reach for tools in real time. The Abyss is a remote control. Hermes is the brain. You own both. Built for people who already host their own things. CHAT - Live token streaming. Watch the agent's reply appear as it's generated. - Transparent tool calls. See the agent reach into your shell, files, or the web - with each tool's name and arguments shown as a card. - Multimodal. Attach images from the photo library and send them with your prompt. - Slash commands. Trigger agent-side commands from a clean, keyboard-friendly composer. VOICE MODE - Hands-free conversation. Dictate prompts and hear the reply spoken back. - On-device transcription. Your voice is transcribed locally; the text is what gets sent to your agent. - Bring-your-own TTS. If your Hermes backend streams text-to-speech, you hear the agent in a neural voice; otherwise it falls back to iOS voices. SESSIONS - Server-side history. Every conversation lives on your own Hermes server, not ours. - Searchable, renameable, pinnable. Find the thread you need, give it a name, keep it on top. - Local cache. Scroll the transcript even when you're offline. MULTIPLE BACKENDS - Run more than one Hermes instance? Add them all. Switch active with one tap. - Pair a second device by scanning a QR code. Credentials never cross our servers - we don't have any. - Each backend gets its own identity colour so you always know which agent you're talking to. DEMO MODE - Not running Hermes yet? Try the demo. A scripted preview shows how the real client behaves, without any setup. No account, no network, no obligation. PRIVACY-FIRST BY DESIGN - All credentials live in iOS Keychain. Face ID required before revealing or sharing them. - No analytics. No third-party SDKs. No telemetry. - The Abyss only talks to the backends you point it at. Apple processes any future purchases; that's the only third party in the loop. - App data flows between your device and your own Hermes backend. Nothing else. REQUIREMENTS - A running Hermes Agent on a machine you control. - Network reachability to that machine. Same Wi-Fi works; Tailscale (or another mesh) is recommended if you want to reach the agent from anywhere. The Abyss is not a hosted AI service. It is a remote control for an AI agent you host yourself.

Screenshots

ProjectBoard2 screens
The Abyss4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: The Abyss at every 5 days against ProjectBoard's every 2 months. ProjectBoard's advantage is device support (4 vs 1) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.5). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ProjectBoard ships an update every 2 months, The Abyss every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences ยท 3 level
ProjectBoard versus The Abyss: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterProjectBoardThe Abyss
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 5 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch โ€” betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.0 โ€” better26.5
Further details โ€” not scored
Size17 MB11 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRebecca Adormeh-KwaoVladimir Adamovic

In-app purchases

None

ProjectBoard

No in-app purchases

None

The Abyss

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is ProjectBoard free?
ProjectBoard is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is The Abyss free?
The Abyss is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do ProjectBoard or The Abyss have ads?
Neither ProjectBoard nor The Abyss shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ProjectBoard or The Abyss?
ProjectBoard ships an update every 2 months, and The Abyss every 5 days. Most recently, ProjectBoard was updated on October 28, 2026 and The Abyss on October 25, 2026.

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