Pick the framework your team already uses — OKR, OGSM, V2MOM, AARRR, HEART, or North Star — and set it up through chat or the Goals UI. Hamster gives you the structure to track what you want and link it to the work that delivers it.
Metrics is where you define how each measurable goal is counted — unit, Direction, aggregation, baselines, and targets. Results is where per-period targets and actuals land, with status and confidence, so the scoreboard stays current without a parallel spreadsheet.
Goals are how your team captures what you want in a place every teammate, every Brief, and the AI assistant can read. Hamster ships with six measurement frameworks built in. You pick the one your team works with — Hamster enforces the shape, you fill in the substance.
Each framework template defines:
Goals are the layer that sits above Initiatives. Initiatives are the bundles of work that deliver a goal; Briefs sit inside initiatives. So the flow goes Goals → Initiatives → Briefs → Plans → Tasks → PRs — outcome at the top, shipped change at the bottom.
You can switch frameworks later. Switching doesn't disturb the work below — your Initiatives, Briefs, Plans, and Tasks all stay intact.
| Framework | Hierarchy you fill in | Default cadence | When it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKR | Objective → 2–5 Key Results | Quarterly | Most product and engineering teams; familiar from Google/Intel |
| OGSM | Objective → 2–5 Goals → Strategies → Measures | Annual | Leadership teams that want a single page from objective down to measurement |
| V2MOM | Vision · Values · Methods · Obstacles · Measures | Annual | Salesforce-style framework that names what could derail you, not just what you're chasing |
| AARRR | Acquisition / Activation / Retention / Referral / Revenue → Metrics | Continuous | Growth and lifecycle teams measuring funnel movement |
| HEART | Feature → Happiness/Engagement/Adoption/Retention/Task Success → Goals · Signals · Metrics | Continuous | Feature- or surface-level UX measurement |
| North Star | North Star Metric → 3–5 Input Metrics | Continuous | Product-led teams centred on a single primary Metric |
Each framework template is versioned and curated by Hamster. When templates evolve, your existing goals don't break — your framework instance keeps its current shape until you choose to upgrade.
The Goals page shows every goal across all your active framework instances in a single list — no switching between frameworks to find what you're looking for.
Each row shows:
Use the search box to find goals by name. Two filters let you narrow the list further:
Filters work together — you can combine a Status filter with a Created by filter to quickly surface, for example, all at-risk goals owned by your team.
The Status filter narrows the list to just the slices you care about, so the at-risk and on-track goals separate out without scrolling the whole scoreboard.
Click New Goal to create a new goal. Hamster constrains the type options to what's valid at the current level of your framework — you can't create a Key Result without an Objective, or a Measure without a Strategy.
Pick a framework — From the Goals page, create a framework instance from a template. Give it a name (e.g. "Q1 2026 OKRs", "Growth AARRR"), pick a cadence (quarterly, annual, monthly, continuous), and optionally set a start and end date. You can also do this through Hamster Chat — see Goals in chat below.
Fill in the hierarchy — Each framework has its own goal types. OKR has Objectives and Key Results. OGSM has Objectives, Goals, Strategies, and Measures. V2MOM has all five top-level types. Hamster enforces the shape — you can't put a Key Result under a Strategy or skip a layer.
Metrics — On any goal type marked measurable (Key Results, OGSM Measures, AARRR/HEART Metrics, North Star and Input Metrics), attach a unit, a Direction (increase / decrease / maintain), an aggregation (sum / avg / last / max / min), an optional baseline, and a target. OGSM Measures can additionally be tagged as leading or lagging KPIs.
Results — A framework's cadence creates periods (Q1 2026, H1 2026, etc.). For each measurable goal, log a target and an actual per period, plus a status (On Track, At Risk, Off Track, Achieved, Missed) and an optional confidence (0–1).
Link Initiatives to goals — From an Initiative, link it to the goal(s) it's meant to deliver. A single Initiative can contribute to multiple goals; a goal can be delivered by multiple initiatives. Optionally weight each link (0–1) when an Initiative only partly serves a goal.
Watch work ladder up — As Briefs ship, their Initiatives roll up into goals. The Goals list shows which goals have Initiatives behind them, which are unanchored, and which are tracking against their targets.
Slice the goal hierarchy from the list view — filter by status to focus on what's On Track, and drill into any goal to adjust it inline.
Hamster Chat understands all six frameworks natively. You can set up a complete framework, fill in every goal, attach metrics, and switch to a different framework — all through conversation, without visiting the Goals UI.
Tell Hamster which framework you want and what you're trying to achieve, and it drafts the full structure for you to review before anything is written. A few examples:
Hamster confirms the full goal tree with you before writing any goals. Once you agree, it creates the framework, the goal hierarchy, and the metrics in one pass.
Upload any strategy document — a deck, a one-pager, a planning PDF — and ask Hamster to create goals from it:
Hamster extracts the relevant content, maps it to your chosen framework's hierarchy, and drafts the full goal tree for your review. You confirm the draft, and Hamster writes it — no copy-paste required.
Once a framework exists, you can add goals in your framework's native vocabulary:
OKR examples:
OGSM examples:
The assistant understands each framework's structure. It won't place a Key Result under a Strategy or skip a required level — the same constraints that apply in the UI apply in chat.
The assistant reads from your active framework when it answers questions, drafts Briefs, generates Plans, and proposes Initiatives. You can also ask directly:
When the assistant proposes a Brief or an Initiative, it can reference the goal it ladders up to — so the why is visible at every layer.
If your team's measurement language changes — say, from OKRs to OGSM, or from North Star to AARRR — you can switch frameworks through chat. Tell Hamster:
Hamster archives the current framework, creates the new one, and remaps your existing goals to their nearest conceptual equivalents in the new framework. Goals that don't have a clean mapping are surfaced explicitly so nothing is quietly dropped. Your Initiatives, Briefs, and Plans are untouched throughout.
Hamster adapts how it works with you on goals based on your role. Founders get strategic urgency and crux-finding framing. Product Managers get milestone-driven, alignment-focused framing. Engineers and engineering managers get precise, system-boundary-aware framing. You don't configure this — Hamster reads from the role you selected during onboarding.
Frameworks are deliberately separated from delivery. Your Initiatives, Briefs, Plans, and Tasks don't depend on which framework you've chosen. If your team moves from OKRs to OGSM, you change the framework instance — the work below stays exactly where it is, and the new framework's goals can re-link to the same initiatives.
This is intentional: frameworks are how you measure direction. Delivery shouldn't have to change shape every time the team picks a new measurement language.
Managing goals (creating frameworks, editing goals, attaching Metrics, recording Results) requires the goals.manage permission. By default this is held by Owners and Admins; Members and Reviewers see goals read-only. Roles and permissions spell out who can change what.
Creating goals through chat follows the same permission rules — if you can create a goal in the UI, you can create one through chat.
Anyone with manage access can claim ownership of a goal from its detail page — the owner avatar lands in the slot in real time.
leading reports early; a lagging one reports outcomes. Mixing them is how strategies stay honest.