Sprint retros, without the theatre.
A real-time retrospective tool that hides cards until reveal — so the first opinion doesn't anchor the room. Anonymous by default. Six templates included.
How it works in 60 seconds
- 1
Pick a template
Six battle-tested formats from classic three-column to Sailboat and 4Ls — or define your own columns.
- 2
Collect anonymously
Share the URL. Everyone adds cards. Nobody sees anyone else's cards until the host clicks reveal.
- 3
Group, vote, decide
Optional grouping and dot voting let the team prioritise. Top cards drive the action items.
Why hidden-until-reveal matters
The first card on a retro board sets the frame for every card after it. If somebody writes "deployments were painful" at minute zero, the next four people are going to write variations on that theme — even if their real top concern was something else.
RetroDeck enforces the anti-anchoring property at the network layer. During the collect phase, non-authors literally do not receive other people's card text — open DevTools, watch the WebSocket frames, it's not there. Only after the host advances to reveal does the content fan out.
That means the input every person gives is genuinely their input — not a reaction to whoever typed fastest.
FAQ
- Is RetroDeck free?
- Yes. RetroDeck is free to use with no account required. Boards expire 14 days after the last activity.
- Why are cards hidden during the collect phase?
- Anchoring. If the first idea on the board is "deployments were painful", everyone's next card drifts toward that. We hide all cards from non-authors until the host clicks reveal, so the inputs are independent.
- How does anonymous voting work?
- Each person gets a configurable number of dot votes (default 5). The server records who voted but only shows the count — voter identity is never sent to other clients. The host can optionally hide live counts until the discussion phase to prevent vote-piling.
- Can we use this for distributed teams?
- Yes. Everything is real-time over WebSockets. Share the board URL with your team — they join from anywhere. No accounts, no SSO friction.
- How long do boards last?
- Anonymous boards are deleted 14 days after the last activity. We don't persist data longer than necessary, and there's no analytics collecting card content.