Linear is one of the best project management tools out there for dev teams. But it was built for internal use, and it shows. The moment a client asks "so what are you working on for us this week?" you're stuck.
Linear does offer guest seats, but giving external people access to your workspace comes with its own problems. You're managing permissions, and worrying about what's visible. Most teams would rather keep their workspace internal and find a cleaner way to share progress.
This post breaks down the options, from quick hacks to dedicated tools, so you can pick what actually fits your workflow.
The problem
You use Linear because it's fast, opinionated, and stays out of your way. Your team lives in it. Issues, cycles, projects, it's all there.
But your client doesn't care about your internal workflow. They care about one thing: what's happening with their project? And right now, the options are limited. You can add them as a guest to your workspace and hope they don't poke around where they shouldn't, or you manually translate your progress into something they can see.
Neither option scales. And both take time you'd rather spend building.
The workarounds everyone tries (and why they break)
Slack or Telegram updates
The fastest option: just message the client when something ships or changes. Works fine for the first week. Then you forget to send an update, the client asks what's going on, and you spend 20 minutes writing a recap that's already outdated by the time you hit send.
You've turned yourself into a human status bot. That's not sustainable.
Notion mirrors or duplicated boards
Copy your Linear structure into Notion and share that with the client. Or duplicate things into a Trello board. Now you have two places to update, and the mirror drifts from reality within hours.
Anyone who's tried this knows the pattern: you update Linear because that's where you actually work, and the client-facing board slowly becomes fiction. Two sources of truth is really zero sources of truth.
CSV exports and screenshots
Some people literally export their Linear board to CSV, clean it up, and send it over. Others take screenshots. This is obviously not a real solution, but it happens more often than you'd think.
What you actually want
Before looking at tools, it helps to know what a good solution looks like:
Linear stays the source of truth. You shouldn't have to update anything else. Whatever the client sees should pull directly from Linear in real time.
Read-only access. Clients should be able to see progress, not edit your issues, reassign things, or accidentally break your workflow.
Clean enough for non-technical stakeholders. The person checking in might be a marketing lead or a founder, not a developer. They don't need to see every label, estimate, and sub-issue.
No extra seats or permissions headaches. You shouldn't need to manage Linear guest access, worry about what's visible, or pay for additional seats for people who just want to glance at progress once a week.
The tools that exist today
There are a few dedicated tools built specifically for this problem. Here's an honest look at each.
Helium Rooms
Full disclosure: this is our tool, so take this with appropriate bias.
Helium Rooms connects to your Linear workspace and lets you create branded, read-only portals (called "rooms") for each client or project. You pick which projects, teams, or labels to expose, and the client gets a clean, filterable view that updates automatically. They can log in with their own account, see what's in progress, what's done, and what's coming up.
One thing that sets it apart is flexibility. You control exactly what shows up in each room, filter by label, and shape the view to match what each client actually needs to see. Clients can also submit issue requests directly through the portal and track their previous requests, so there's a clear channel for feedback without giving them access to your Linear workspace.
It's an official Linear integration, listed in the Linear directory. The focus is on reliability and speed. No manual syncing, no stale data.
Where it fits best: agencies and dev teams that want something simple, fast, and focused on project visibility.
Lindie
Lindie is one of the more established tools in this space and is listed in the Linear integration directory. It lets you share a project board with clients and add links to external pages. It also has a comment syncing feature where you tag a comment in Linear with a keyword to push it to the client.
The main limitations are flexibility and reliability. Lindie gives you a fairly fixed display of your Linear data. You can't filter by label or customize what each client sees in much detail. Users have also reported issues with features being unreliable. Like notifications not working or being overly frequent, which can erode trust with clients if they're getting spammed or missing updates.
Lindie is also not actively maintained anymore.
Steelsync
Steelsync takes a similar approach. Like Lindie, it gives you a relatively fixed view of your Linear data without much room to customize what each client sees or filter by labels. Worth a look, but if flexibility and a polished client experience matter to you, compare carefully before committing.
Building something custom with the Linear API
Linear has a solid API, so you could build your own client portal. This makes sense if you have very specific requirements that no existing tool covers.
The tradeoff is obvious: you're now maintaining a custom tool on top of the product you're supposed to be building for clients. For most teams, this isn't worth the ongoing effort. But if you're a larger agency with a very specific workflow, it's a valid path.
So which option should you pick?
It depends on your situation.
If you're a solo developer sharing progress with one or two people, a simple Notion page, regular Slack updates, or a free Helium Rooms account might be enough. The overhead is manageable when it's just you.
If you're an agency with multiple clients, you need something that scales without adding work. That means automated syncing from Linear, separate views per client, and ideally some branding so the portal feels like part of your service. This is where dedicated tools make the most sense.
The one thing I'd avoid: building a manual process you'll resent in three months. Whatever you pick, make sure Linear stays the place where work happens. Everything else should just be a window into it.