Four gas stoves and no pan
How a group packs in Farangur — a need, a claim, a board that opens on what's missing, one question at the moment of the mistake, and an invite link a friend can use without an account.
Picture a festival. Six of you, one camp. A week before, somebody writes in the group chat: "who's bringing a stove?" Three people answer "I can". Nobody writes "so I won't, then." And a pan? Nobody mentioned a pan. You find out on Friday evening, with four gas stoves lined up on the grass and nothing to put on them.
The spreadsheet I packed from for five years had a cell that just said "gas stove ???". This is the half of packing the sheet never solved, and the half I most wanted the app to.
A need and a claim
When you create a pack in Farangur you can switch on "Packing as a group". Your own list stays yours — the Mine tab — and the group gets a second tab, Shared. That's the board.
The board has two things, and only two. A need is something the group needs: gas stove, 1. Anyone can add one without promising anything — that's how the "???" gets written down instead of forgotten. A claim is the answer: the "I take it" button. I'm bringing it.
A need has a count with two presets: just 1, or per person — one stove for the whole camp, six chairs for six people. Anything else you just type.
My favourite bit: when you claim something, it lands on your own list too, at "taking", and goes through the same three phases as your socks. The board is not a second place to forget things. You promised the stove, so the stove is on your pile.
The board opens on the problem
The board has a fixed order: MISSING first, then EXTRA, then COVERED, folded away. MISSING is the only red on the screen. Open it and the first thing you see is the pan nobody has taken, not the twenty things that are fine.
Under a need nobody has claimed, the app writes "Has it: Ivo, Miška". That comes from what people marked as their things, which is why marking them pays off. "Who even owns a stove" gets answered before anyone has to ask it in the chat.
Four stoves
When Peter taps "I take it" on a stove Ivo has already promised, the app stops him with one sentence: Ivo is already taking it, one is needed — really take another one? Two buttons: "Better not" and "Take it anyway".
Neither is wrong. Sometimes you really do want two stoves — one for coffee, one for everything else — and the app must not be smarter than the people using it. But that one question, asked at the moment of the mistake, is how four stoves become one.
If somebody takes it anyway, the row moves to EXTRA and says how many would have done. Nobody is scolded; everybody can see.
The link
The friend who never installs anything is the reason this works at all. "Invite the group" makes a link; you send it wherever the group already talks — Signal, WhatsApp, a text. Whoever opens it is in the pack and can claim things without an account: open, tap "I take it", type a name, done. An account is offered afterwards, never before.
Yes, whoever has the link is inside — exactly like a shared spreadsheet today. A group that can't agree on a pan doesn't need a permissions matrix.
What it doesn't do
Two things, so nobody is surprised at the campsite. It doesn't sort out who drives whom — the pack says what comes along, not in whose boot. And it doesn't work without a signal: the board is a planning tool for the week before, at home, on wifi. In a field with no reception you can't claim anything — fine, because who brings what gets agreed on the sofa, not in the field.
The pan, by the way, is still MISSING. Somebody tap it.