How to use the Hot air balloon retro template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Hot air balloon retro template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Hot air balloon retro”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Fill the first two columns about the last sprint, the last two about the next one. End by turning one sandbag into an action with an owner.”
Fill in each part
- Hot air What gave us lift? Habits, people, tools that pushed us up.
- Sandbags What weighed us down and kept us lower than we could be?
- Weather ahead What storms or tailwinds do we see coming next sprint?
- Destination Where should we steer? Name one or two things to try.
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Hot air balloon retro board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

Retrospectives: Guided retros: write alone under a timer, reveal, group, vote and leave with owned actions.

Mad, sad, glad retro
A feelings-first retro: what frustrated people, what disappointed them, what made them glad, and one thing to try.
Mountain climb retro
A picture-led retro for a long stretch of work: the summit we aimed for, what held us, what fell on us and what to pack next time.
Start, stop, continue
A quick retro: what to begin, what to drop, what to keep, and one experiment.
Liked, learned, lacked, longed for
A reflective retro in four quadrants that looks at learning, not only problems.
Starfish retro
Five arms for finer feedback than keep or stop: what to keep, do more of, do less of, stop and start.
Sprint timeline retro
Rebuild the sprint day by day before judging it, so the retro talks about what happened rather than what people remember last.