How to use the Straw, sticks, bricks retro template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Straw, sticks, bricks retro template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Straw, sticks, bricks retro”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Name practices, not people. Each sticky is a habit or process placed by how well it holds up under pressure. End by picking one straw house to rebuild.”
Fill in each part
- Straw: falls over Practices that collapse the moment we are busy.
- Sticks: shaky Practices that mostly hold but wobble.
- Bricks: solid Practices that hold whatever happens.
- Rebuild first Which straw house do we turn into bricks, and how?
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 Straw, sticks, bricks 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.

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.
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.
Mad, sad, glad retro
A feelings-first retro: what frustrated people, what disappointed them, what made them glad, and one thing to try.
Starfish retro
Five arms for finer feedback than keep or stop: what to keep, do more of, do less of, stop and start.
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.