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Hey, I built Wren after being a little frustrated with everything else. I wanted something that let's me (1) enter tasks as quickly as possible, (2) let's me do
by yoavm 3y ago
Hey, I built Wren after being a little frustrated with everything else. I wanted something that let's me (1) enter tasks as quickly as possible, (2) let's me do it on the go, (3) can be easily backed up, (4) requires no fiddling around.
I'm super happy with how this turned out. Hopefully someone somewhere would also find this useful!
The following is straight from the README:
Wren is simple because every note is one file. The filename is the title, and the content is the note's content. This makes it very easy to sync tasks between devices, as conflicts can almost never happen, even if syncing isn't done real time. The files are plain text, so you can just write. If you want a task to repeat every Saturday you just prefix it with a cron syntax, e.g. 0 8 * * 6 weekly swim, and if you want a task to appear from a specific time you just start it with the date, like 2030-01-01 check if Wren became super popular.
Wren is advanced because it is very extensible - it comes (optionally!) with a Telegram bot that you can chat with to manage your notes, and even get AI-driven daily summaries as if you had a personal assistant. It also includes a tiny HTTP server that you can use to manage tasks using an API or from the browser, which can be used for displaying you tasks elsewhere (e.g. in your e-reader).
- kova12 3y agoHow do you take notes when computer is not available? Do you just VPN home and connect to the http endpoint, or...
- yoavm 3y agoUsing the telegram bot - you just text it. You could have the bot running on some server and sync the tasks from there to your computer, but it's really not needed. One of the nice things about Telegram bots is that the messages are queued until the bot becomes available, meaning I can text my bot on the go and the moment my laptop opens all the files are created.
- rozenmd 3y agoThat's brilliant.
- jonnyparris 3y agoGreat job shipping this! The telegram interface is a nice touch. Can you expand more on your frustrations were with something like Todoist (my personal fav) for meeting your success criteria? What are most todo apps getting wrong / conflicting with your preferred workflow?
- yoavm 3y agothank you :) to begin with, I wanted it open source & local first. Anything that wasn't that wasn't really considered. most todo apps that passed this criteria were either a pain to work from the terminal, or were uncomfortable to use on the go (often due to syncing), or forced me to use their designated tools when working with the notes.
- karpour 3y agoThis is fantastic, the 3 different interfaces make a lot of sense, and having a cli makes it a breeze to plug other stuff in! I'll give this a try soon! Is there json output for the cli by any chance?
- yoavm 3y agoThank you! The CLI doesn't do JSON output for now, curious about your use case? I assume you can slap `jq` on it like this: `n | jq -R -s -c 'split("\n")[:-1]'` The HTTP interface will do JSON unless you include `Accept: text/html` in your requests.
- freetanga 3y agoGreat job! Last year I switched from Todoist to task warrior and taskwarrior-tui. I am looking into TaskNote to extend the notes ability. What would you say is your differentiator? What drove you to write this for a non-covered aspiration (out of curiosity) BTW great idea on Telegram. Might try to replicate for Taskwarrior as my mobile set up is iffy (iCloud, a-shell for local taskwarrior, iOS shortcuts for a gui on top)
- yoavm 3y agoThank you! It's been a long time since I tried Task warrior, so I might be quite off. Two main things come to mind: I realized that most task management apps offered many features that fooled me into spending time on organizing my data instead of doing my tasks. Tags, sub-tasks, projects, reminders, due dates. For me (and it could be a very personal thing) all these features became a hurdle as I was spending time trying to figure out how to tag my task or rethinking my hierarchies etc. I realized I wanted a system that does less. The second thing that comes to mind is the extensibility that comes for free when every task is a file. I can easily copy an email to my todo folder and now it is a task. I can delete a task with `rm`. The fact that the notes themselves actually have absolutely noting to do with the management system is something that I experience as a very nice advantage.
- ukuina 3y agoFabulous. Thanks for taking the time to document it with a clear video. Have so many interfaces raises my confidence in being able to add and access tasks rapidly and from anywhere. The Telegram integration is likely the killer feature.