hackberrydev / alas

A command line utility for managing your plan in a single Markdown file.

Alas

Alas is a command line utility for managing a plan in a single Markdown file.

An example plan:

# My Plan

## Inbox

- [ ] #home - Fix the lamp
- [ ] Update Rust

## 2020-08-01, Saturday

- [ ] Develop photos
- [X] Pay bills

## 2020-07-31, Friday

- Met with Mike and Molly
- [X] #work - Review open pull requests
- [X] #work - Fix the flaky test

The plan file has days in present and future that serve as your plan, but also past days that serve as a log.

Alas can insert new empty days into your plan, remove empty days from past, schedule tasks and help you stay in touch with your contacts.

For more information, visit the the main Alas website.

Development

Install dependencies with:

jpm load-lockfile --local

Run tests with:

./test.sh

alas's Issues

Contact and birthday reminders should be scheduled for all existing future days

Option to schedule task on the last day of every month

Update the project description and README

Command for scheduling task for upgrading Alas

Implement a command (e.g. --check-upgrade) that will check if a new version of Alas is available and if it is, schedule a task to upgrade Alas.

An error is raised when the command line arguments are not correct

Alas should display a user friendly error when the command line arguments are not correct.

Backup fails when file path begins with ..

Show error when scheduled tasks are empty

Missed scheduled tasks should be highlighted

Create binary for Windows

This probably requires using universal line endings instead of \n in parsers.

A plan without an inbox section can't be parsed

Birthday reminders that should be scheduled in future are marked as missed

Wrong date when using `--insert-days`

When I run --insert-days in my timezone, at 9am the first day inserted is not today but the day before. Seems to be a timezone problem. Sometime later that day (did not investigate deeper) it correctly inserts the actual day.

$ date --iso-8601=minutes
2024-01-31T09:01+11:00
$ cat plan.md 
# My Plan

## Inbox
$ ./alas-x86_64-linux --insert-days 3 plan.md
Created backup.
$ cat plan.md
# My Plan

## Inbox

## 2024-02-01, Thursday

## 2024-01-31, Wednesday

## 2024-01-30, Tuesday

When combined with --insert-task it adds the task to the last day which is not what I would expect:

$ ./alas-x86_64-linux --insert-days 3 --insert-task "Hello World" plan.md
Created backup.
$ cat plan.md
# My Plan

## Inbox

## 2024-02-01, Thursday

## 2024-01-31, Wednesday

## 2024-01-30, Tuesday

- [ ] Hello World

I just found alas and like the idea very much. I would be happy to contribute a patch but I am not used to reading and understanding Lisp dialects.

Implement report command

The command should print completed tasks for the number of days supplied as a parameter.

Alas returns wrong status even when there are no errors

Alas returns the status code "4" even when there were no errors in parsing.

Command for scheduling a task on the specific date in every month

An error is displayed when --insert-days is used without a parameter

Plan template from README can't be parsed

This plan can't be parsed:

# My Plan

## Inbox

## 2022-05-12

Scheduling contacts with birthday doesn't work

Alas should respect missing inbox

If # Inbox is present in the plan, but there are no tasks in the inbox, Alas should serialize an empty inbox. If # Inbox is not present in the plan, Alas should not serialize the inbox.

Command for scheduling task on the last workday in a month

Serializing empty inbox doesn't work correctly

Handle contacts

See:

• https://jakobgreenfeld.com/stay-in-touch
• https://sive.rs/hundreds

From Derek Siver's system:

• A list: Very important people. Contact every three weeks.
• B list: Important people. Contact every two months.
• C list: Most people. Contact every six months.
• D list: Demoted people. Contact once a year, to make sure you still have their correct info.

A new scheduled task is listed as missed when it's very old

When a new scheduled task is added, the next time --schedule-tasks is executed, the task will be listed as missed. That's OK sometimes, but it can be confusing if the scheduled task is very old. For example, it can be 11 months old.

Maybe skipped scheduled tasks should not be scheduled as missed if they are older than 30 days or something like that.

An error is show when running just alas --help

Validate task schedule

Show an error if a task is incorrectly scheduled. For example, if a user mistypes a day - "every Tursday".

Implement --version command

Parsing failure when last list item lacks preceding checkbox

If a day ends with a list item that is not preceded with a checkbox parsing the plan file fails:

$ alas --stats test.md
Plan can not be parsed: last parsed line is line 9.

Here is a minimal example reproducing the problem:

# My Plan

## Inbox

## 2022-07-28, Thursday

- [ ] Develop photos
- [X] Pay bills
- Met with Mike and Molly

Whereas if the line is somewhere in between parsing works.

# My Plan

## Inbox

## 2022-07-28, Thursday

- Met with Mike and Molly
- [ ] Develop photos
- [X] Pay bills

Skipped monthly tasks are never scheduled

Command for creating new tasks

E.g. --insert-task "Review PR https://github.com/hackberrydev/alas/pull/42".

When a day is skipped a task is never scheduled

If there is a scheduled task for a day, if alas is not executed on that day, the task is never scheduled. The task should be scheduled on the first day when alas is executed again.

Command for moving pending tasks to today

Alas should support a command (e.g. --move-pending-tasks) that moves all pending tasks from past days to today (if today exists).

Tasks in future should not be marked as missed

Show some information when a plan file can't be parsed

At the moment, when a plan can't be parsed, the only output is that the file can't be parsed. The tool should show more information so that the user has a chance to fix the issue.

Scheduled task without scheduled time messes up the plan

When there is a scheduled task that doesn't have a scheduled time, scheduling messes up the plan. For example:

- Update server (every month)
- Review logs
- Practice chess (every weekday)

An error is displayed when --report is used without a parameter

Add option to schedule a task every day

Implement plan backup command

The command should probably be turned on by default. There should be an option to skip backup.

Return non-zero code when there were errors

Add warning to README

Add warning that Alas can destroy data and that it's advisable to make a backup of the plan every time.

Tasks should match only by title

"Weekly meeting" issue.

Command for listing all pending tasks by days

Backup doesn't work when plan file path begins with ./

When --version is not used and file path is missing, an error is raised

Scheduled tasks

Remove empty days in past

Wrong indentation in a task body breaks parsing

If a task body has wrong indentation, Alas fails silently. No errors are displayed, but no commands are executed.

Example of a plan:

## 2024-03-28, Thursday

- [ ] 16:00 Pair programming with Mary
 - Re: New chart
- [ ] Standup

In the example - Re: New chart is indented only one space instead of two.

Missed birthdays should be highlighted

Introduce a new state for skipped tasks

Pending tasks are marked with - [ ]. Completed tasks are marked with - [X]. If we want to skip a task - so that it's not scheduled over and over again, we have to mark it as completed, which is misleading. We should introduce a new state for skipped tasks. Examples:

- [>] Skipped task
- [-] Skipped task
- [0] Skipped task
- [o] Skipped task
- [/] Skipped task
- [~] Skipped task

The last option is used by [x]it!.

Readme should link to the main documentation site

When a day is skipped a birthday reminder is never scheduled