gtd-rust-taskwarrior

A small wrapper CLI app to assist with using taskwarrior for the GTD methodology. Written in rust

Justification - Why does this exist?

Taskwarrior is a great tool for support the gtd methodology, with great support form the following features:

• A next task list (with priority)
• Tickle folder/tasks
• Someday/maybe lists
• Projects(ish - see below)
• Contexts (via tags e.g. @home, @work)
• Delegate/waiting tasks

However certain aspects of the methodology I find are not as easy to interact with as, such as:

• Projects are only tracked if they have pending tasks associated with them by default, with the only other option to show all projects that have ever existed making project review a convoluted process
• I believe GTD relies heavily on reducing friction for creating/updating tasks & projects as much as possible in order to keep the user (me) motivated/up to date.
• By personal preference, pen and paper lists are not an ideal solution for me - I want something in software.
• It would be great to have an app to work with taskwarrior to assist with filling in the gaps/friction points with GTD.
• I have had a burning desire to try and write something in rust for some time

Installation/Usage

This project is currently in pre-release status, so please treat accordingly. That being said, if you still want to try it out, run the following from the root of the repo:

cargo build --release

From there copy ./target/release/gtd to somewhere within your $PATH. Then simply invoke the command using gtd.

Once I'm satisfied with the base level behaviour, I hope to publish via cargo to make installation easier.

Specification

gtd-rust 1.0.0 will provide support for the following:

• Have an easily customisable CLI interface to adapt to changing use cases
• Keep a separate inventory to taskwarrior for active projects
  • Assign an ID for each active project
  • [x]Provide a method to import tasks from taskwarrior via gtd init
• Provide a method to manually add tasks to the active projects via gtd add <PROJECT>
• Provide a method to implement a taskwarrior hook to add projects to the inventory via gtd hooks
• Provide an easy review process for all current projects via gtd project review
  • Assign next actions for those that do not currently have them - [ ] mark finished projects as completed.
  • Provide a --quick quick option, to only review projects without a next action
  • Provide a --short option to only display a list of currently active projects for review
• Provide closing command for open projects via gtd <ID> done

Additional considerations:

• If context is not `none either:
  • Warn the user with regards to currently set context
  • Switch context to none for duration of the command, then revert back

Assumptions

• Will treat all projects as WYSIWYG - i.e. taskwarrior subproject syntax will just be treated as is (e.g shopping.boots will be treated as a separate project unrelated to shopping.aldi)
  • The reason for this is that (for me) sub projects are dealt with just fine via taskwarrior. The parent project (in this example shopping) fits more in the horizon 3 category of GTD, which this tool is not aiming to implement (yet...?)
• No duplicate projects are allowed
• When a project is marked as completed, for gtd it no longer exists (i.e deleted).
  • History/reopening projects is handled fine by taskwarrior. The purpose of this piece is just to track ongoing projects (specifically those with no current next actions - which taskwarrior by default sees as completed)

Config

• next_action_tag: The tag used to represent next action in taskwarrior (default: next)