TODOMAN(1)

📦
version 4.7.0 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

🌸 TODOMAN(1) 🌸

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about todoman — a simple, standards-based, cli todo manager. yes it's a manpage, yes we're gonna make it cute, no we will not be skipping a single flag. 💖

🌈 NAME 🌈

todoman — a simple, standards-based, cli todo manager 💅

✨ TODOMAN ✨

Here's the whole shape of it:

todoman [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Lowkey iconic. Now the receipts 🧾

🎀 Options

  • -v, --verbosity <LVL> — how chatty it gets. Pick one of CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO or DEBUG. 🗣️
  • --colour, --color <colour> — by default todoman will disable colored output if stdout is not a TTY (that value is auto). Set it to never to turn colour off entirely, or always to enable it regardless. ✨
    • Options: always | auto | never
  • --porcelain — spits out a JSON format that'll stay stable no matter your config or your version. this one's for the machines, no cap 🤖
  • -h, --humanize — formats all dates and times in a human friendly way. (yes, -h is humanize here, mind the muscle memory 🙈)
  • -c, --config <PATH> — the config file you want it to use. 🗂️
  • --version — shows the version and dips out. 👋

🌱 Environment variables

  • TODOMAN_CONFIG — provides a default for --config.

👑 Commands

  • cancel — cancel one or more tasks.
  • copy — copy tasks to another list.
  • delete — delete tasks.
  • done — mark one or more tasks as done.
  • edit — edit the task with id ID.
  • flush — delete done tasks.
  • list — list tasks (this is the default one, the main character).
  • lists — returns all the lists.
  • move — move tasks to another list.
  • new — create a new task with SUMMARY.
  • path — print the path to a task's file.
  • repl — start an interactive shell.
  • show — show details about a task.

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

todoman is a simple, standards-based, cli todo (aka: task) manager. Todos are stored into icalendar files, which means you can sync them via CalDAV using, for example, vdirsyncer. like, your tasks live in files, and the files travel. obsessed. 🦋

🌸 USAGE 🌸

Todoman usage is CLI-based (thought there are some TUI bits, and the intentions is to also provide a fully TUI-based interface).

The default action is list, which outputs all tasks for all calendars, each with a semi-permanent unique id:

 1 [ ] !!! 2015-04-30 Close bank account @work (0%)
 2 [ ] !              Send minipimer back for warranty replacement @home (0%)
 3 [X]     2015-03-29 Buy soy milk @home (100%)
 4 [ ] !!             Fix the iPad's screen @home (0%)
 5 [ ] !!             Fix the Touchpad battery @work (0%)

The columns, in order, are:

  • An id.
  • Whether the task has been completed or not.
  • An !!! indicating high priority, !! indicating medium priority, ! indicating low priority tasks.
  • The due date.
  • The task summary.
  • The list the todo is from; it will be hidden when filtering by one list, or if the database only contains a single list.
  • The completed percentage.

The id is retained by todoman until the next time you run the flush command.

To operate on a todo, the id is what's used to reference it. For example, to edit the Buy soy milk task from the example above, the proper command is todoman edit 3, or todoman undo 3 to un-mark the task as done. 🔥

Editing tasks can only be done via the TUI interface for now, and cannot be done via the command line yet. (crying in terminal 😭)

🧚 SYNCHRONIZATION 🧚

If you want to synchronize your tasks, you'll need something that syncs via CalDAV. vdirsyncer is the recommended tool for this. go get it, it's the standard. 💜

🌈 INTERACTIVE SHELL 🌈

If click-repl is installed, todoman supports the repl command, which launches an interactive shell with tab-completion. tab-completion?? she's giving convenience 💅

⭐ INTEGRATIONS ⭐

When attempting to integrate todoman into other systems or parse its output, you're advised to use the --porcelain flag, which will print all output in a pre-defined format that will remain stable regardless of user configuration or version.

The format is JSON, with a single array containing each todo as a single entry (object). Fields will always be present; if a todo does not have a value for a given field, it will be printed as null.

Fields MAY be added in future, but will never be removed. (additive only, bestie — nothing gets taken from you 🫶)

🖥️ Conky

Todoman can be used with Conky by using one of the shell execution variables. Given the nature of pimutils utilities, there is no need to query new information every time conky updates so execi will be the best option most of the time.

Adding ${execi 30 todo} inside the text section will display the output of the command and update it every 30 seconds. ⏱️

A working configuration can be found here: <https://github.com/r4ulill0/todoman/blob/main/docs/examples/conky.conf>.

🎀 SORTING 🎀

The tasks can be sorted with the --sort argument. Sorting may be done according to the following fields:

  • description
  • location
  • status
  • summary
  • uid
  • rrule
  • percent_complete
  • priority
  • sequence
  • categories
  • completed_at
  • created_at
  • dtstamp
  • start
  • due
  • last_modified

It is possible to prepend a - to a field to sort by that field in ascending order (by default they are sorted in descending order). sneaky little minus sign, doing so much ✨

Example:

todoman list --sort due,-priority

💖 CONFIGURING 💖

You'll need to configure Todoman before the first usage, using its simple ini-like configuration file. (it says "ini-like" but it's literally a python file, we love a glow-up)

📁 CONFIGURATION FILE 📁

The configuration file should be placed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/todoman/config.py. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to ~/.config is most situations, so this will generally be ~/.config/todoman/config.py.

  • cache_path — The location of the cache file (an sqlite database). This file is used to store todo data and speed up execution/startup, and also contains the IDs for todos. If the value is not specified, a path relative to $XDG_CACHE_HOME will be used. $XDG_CACHE_HOME generally resolves to ~/.cache/.
    • type: str
    • default: "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/todoman/cache.sqlite3"
  • color — By default todoman will disable colored output if stdout is not a TTY (value auto). Set to never to disable colored output entirely, or always to enable it regardless. This can be overridden with the --color option.
    • type: str
    • default: "auto"
  • date_format — The date format used both for displaying dates, and parsing input dates. If this option is not specified the system locale's is used.
    • type: str
    • default: "%x"
  • default_command — When running todo with no commands, run this command.
    • type: str
    • default: "list"
  • default_due — The default difference (in hours) between new todo's due date and creation date. If not specified, the value is 24. If set to 0, the due date for new todos will not be set.
    • type: int
    • default: 24
  • default_list — The default list for adding a todo. If you do not specify this option, you must use the --list / -l option every time you add a todo.
    • type: str
    • default: None
  • default_priority — The default priority of a task on creation. Highest priority is 1, lowest priority is 10, and 0 means no priority at all.
    • type: int
    • default: None
  • dt_separator — The string used to separate date and time when displaying and parsing.
    • type: str
    • default: " "
  • humanize — If set to true, datetimes will be printed in human friendly formats like "tomorrow", "in one hour", "3 weeks ago", etc. If false, datetimes will be formatted using date_format and time_format.
    • type: bool
    • default: False
  • path — A glob pattern matching the directories where your todos are located. This pattern will be expanded, and each matching directory (with any icalendar files) will be treated as a list.
    • type: str
    • default: "~/calendars/"
  • startable — If set to true, only show todos which are currently startable; these are todos which have a start date today, or some day in the past. Todos with no start date are always considered current. Incomplete todos (eg: partially-complete) are also included.
    • type: bool
    • default: False
  • time_format — The date format used both for displaying times, and parsing input times.
    • type: str
    • default: "%X"

🦋 SAMPLE CONFIGURATION 🦋

The below example should serve as a reference. It will read ics files from any directory inside ~/.local/share/calendars/, uses the ISO-8601 date format, and set the due date for new todos in 48hs.

# A glob expression which matches all directories relevant.
path = "~/my_calendars/*"
date_format = "%Y-%m-%d"
time_format = "%H:%M"
default_list = "Personal"
default_due = 48

(also known as: three lines in and you're already thriving ✨)

🎨 COLOR AND DISPLAYNAME 🎨

  • You can set a color for each task list by creating a color file containing a color code in the hex format: #RRGGBB.
  • A file named displayname indicates how the task list should be named and is needed when there are multiple directories sharing a name, e.g.: when using multiple $CloudInstances. The default is the directory name.

See also relevant documentation for the vdir format: <https://vdirsyncer.pimutils.org/en/stable/vdir.html#metadata>.

🌍 TIMEZONE 🌍

Todoman will use the system-wide configured timezone. If this doesn't work for you, you may override the timezone by specifying the TZ environment variable.

For instruction on changing your system's timezone, consult your distribution's documentation.

💀 CAVEATS 💀

Support for the percent-completed attribute is incomplete. Todoman can only mark todos as completed (100%), and will not reflect nor allow editing for values for percent > 0 ^ percent < 100. so, partial credit? not a thing here. it's all or nothing bestie 😭

🫶 CONTRIBUTING 🫶

For information on contributing, see: <https://todoman.readthedocs.io/en/stable/contributing.html>

📜 LICENCE 📜

Todoman is licensed under the ISC licence. See LICENCE for details.

👑 Author

Hugo Osvaldo Barrera <hugo@whynothugo.nl>, et al

2015-2023, Hugo Osvaldo Barrera

okay that's the whole page, you read all of it, I'm so proud of you 🥹💖 this was 4.7.0, dated Jun 13, 2026 — go organise your little tasks, you absolute legend. 💅✨🌈

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