How to use the Mad, sad, glad retro template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Mad, sad, glad retro template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Mad, sad, glad retro”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Give five quiet minutes to write, one feeling per sticky. Read them out without debate, then group them and turn the biggest cluster into one experiment.”
Fill in each part
- Mad What frustrated you or got in your way?
- Sad What disappointed you or felt like a missed chance?
- Glad What made you happy or proud?
- We will try One experiment for next sprint, with an owner.
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 Mad, sad, glad 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.

Hot air balloon retro
A picture-led retro: what lifts the team, what weighs it down, the weather ahead and where the balloon should go next.
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.