A command line tool for keeping track of what you’re doing and tracking what you’ve done.
For a summary of all commands and options, see Doing - All Commands.
The current version of doing is 2.1.87.
Find all of the documentation in the doing wiki.
Check out some craziness with Doing in the iTerm status bar and the Mac Touch Bar/menu bar.
doing is a basic CLI for adding and listing “what was I doing” reminders in a
TaskPaper-formatted text file. It allows for
multiple sections/categories and flexible output formatting.
While I’m working, I have hourly reminders to record what I’m working on, and I
try to remember to punch in quick notes if I’m unexpectedly called away from a
project. I can do this just by typing doing now tracking down the CG bug.
If there’s something I want to look at later but doesn’t need to be added to a
task list or tracker, I can type doing later check out the pinboard bookmarks
from macdrifter. When I get back to my computer — or just need a refresher
after a distraction — I can type doing last to see what the last thing on
my plate was. I can also type doing recent (or just doing) to get a list of
the last few entries. doing today gives me everything since midnight for the
current day, making it easy to see what I’ve accomplished over a sleepless
night.
Doing has over 30 commands for tracking your status, recording your time, and analyzing the results.
See the wiki for installation and usage instructions.
The LaunchBar action requires that doing be available in
/usr/local/bin/doing. If it’s not (because you’re using RVM or similar),
you’ll need to symlink it there. Running the action with Return will show the
latest 9 items from Currently, along with any time intervals recorded, and
includes a submenu of Timers for each tag.
Pressing Spacebar and typing allows you to add a new entry to currently. You an also trigger a custom show command by typing “show [section/tag]” and hitting return. Include any command line flags at the end of the string, and if you add text in parenthesis, it will be processed as a note on the entry.
Point of interest, the LaunchBar Action makes use of the -o json flag for
outputting JSON to the action’s script for parsing.
Download Doing for LaunchBar v2.2
A LaunchBar action for use with doing
Published 02/07/20.
Updated 07/01/21. Changelog
Evan Lovely has created an Alfred workflow as well.
If you create a plugin, custom command, or hook you can share, please let me know. If I get a few plugin contributions, I’ll set up a second repository for them.
Feel free to fork the repository on GitHub and make pull requests
with changes. Please target the develop branch with pull requests.
2024-12-14 15:27
2024-03-26 10:57
--from today will now assume current time as end date. Results of doing show all --from today will now match doing today.2024-03-26 10:17
2023-08-17 09:49
doing config update and see the new shortdate_format section in your config file)2023-07-01 12:49
2023-07-01 12:39
2023-05-31 11:47
2023-03-11 10:50
2023-03-11 10:21
2023-03-11 06:03
2023-03-11 05:50
2023-03-10 15:16
2023-01-01 07:30
commands list without --style flag2022-08-28 14:37
2022-08-08 12:19
2022-08-08 12:05
2022-08-08 11:58
2022-07-21 09:31
2022-07-21 07:11
doing-plugin-* will be loaded and available to doing.2022-07-01 10:02
doing view not respecting search.highlight config2022-06-29 05:54
2022-06-29 02:06
2022-06-29 01:59
doing update will update doing to the latest available versiondoing done ... wasn’t autotagging the new entry2022-06-01 10:20
-s flag on doing show now means section instead of search. Use --search for the search flag.doing show --section NAME allows limiting tag results to a section (same as running doing show SECTION_NAME @TAG but added for compatibility with other commands)2022-05-26 11:20
i[:finished] as a boolean in Markdown export template (tests for @done tag and provides true/false)2022-05-26 10:20
i[:flagged] will be set to true or false based on whether the item has @flagged (or whatever marker_tag is set to) presentdoing recent --interactive XX wasn’t respecting XX count and instead showing alldoing recent --section SECT COUNT not respecting count when section is provided2022-05-26 07:11
2022-05-25 16:10
2022-05-25 12:36
doing select -> select repeat/resume from menu, failed to repeat2022-05-25 12:33
doing archive --no-label not being respected2022-05-16 07:40
2022-05-12 08:49
doing again, don’t replace an existing @done tag on the entry to be repeated2022-05-11 10:13
doing now --finish_last not finishing most recent entrydoing now --from not parsing finish date from time range2022-03-26 11:12
--output doing now outputs true Doing file format, including IDs, so existing entries can be updated when re-importing this outputdoing config open as a synonym for edit--bool flag2022-03-23 08:19
2022-03-22 08:57
2022-03-21 07:46
doing views --remove NAME to delete a viewdoing views -e) deletes the view--save also accept --title TITLE2022-03-20 12:44
--save NAME with view commands to store command line options as a view in configdoing custom and get doing view custom if ‘custom’ is not a recognized commanddoing views to dump the YAML for a single viewdoing views NAME --editor to open the YAML for a single view in the default editor, saving the result to main configdoing views [-e] -o json NAME to dump or edit a view as json instead of YAMLdoing changes --only [changed,new,improved,fixed] to only show changes of a typedoing changes --prefix will output each change with a type prefixless when paging to avoid pager if less than one screendoing templates --list returning error2022-03-17 09:38
editors.pager allows you to force a pager (ignore env settings)bat from pager options as it just falls back to less -Xr anywaydoing select --editor and opening the editor, fixes some TTY echo issuesdoing last --editor has no changes, exit gracefullydoing config set issues with keys that default to nildoing config set --remove missing last element of key path2022-03-16 09:29
doing tag_dir -r TAG can remove an indivudal tag from default_tags (–clear removes all)doing tag_dir accepts --editor to edit tag list in default editordoing tag_dir without arguments requests input via readline.txt instead of .md for editor temp file to avoid incorrect syntax higlighting in editor2022-03-14 19:56
doing finish accepts --from ranges to update both start and finish datesdoing finish allows --back and --took to be used togetherdoing finish allows --search and --tag to be used togetherdoing finish --from 'DATE to DATE' allows you to set a new start and end time with a single range stringdoing reset --from 'DATE to DATE' allows you to reset an entry’s start time and update or add @done timedoing reset accepts a --took Xm flag to change the finish time--output FORMAT option for all display commands, including last, recent and today2022-03-13 04:32
--val accepts date, time, title, note, text for comparisons--val where if only a time is supplied for a date query, ignore the date and filter entries by time of day--val comparisonsdoing tag 'name(value)' to update an existing value (already works with --value flag)--editor flag for doing show to batch edit resultsdoing select, allow a tag with a value to update an existing valuedoing on today breaking on Ruby 2.62022-03-12 15:40
--val 'duration > 2h' allows querying elapsed time of entries--editor not saving results in some commands (including doing search -e)2022-03-12 11:37
doing on today, converts to ‘current date 12am to 11:59pm’2022-02-25 08:44
doing done --took2022-02-21 14:53
2022-02-20 09:32
--from 8am time range without end time to mean 8am to 11:59pm--tag_order for commands with --totals output that were missing it--only_timed filter for yesterday--only_timed for todaydoing sections now has subcommands – sections list, sections add SECTION (replaces add_section) and sections remove SECTION allows removal of a section and archiving of its contentsdoing yesterday --from not filtering time range--from time filter for yesterdaydoing archive--times error in doing today2022-02-18 12:09
2022-02-18 08:34
doing config set --local flag to force updates to local .doingrc, creating if it doesn’t exist, and bypassing menu selectiondoing tag_dir will not allow duplicate tags or tags that are already applied by a config higher up the hierarchydoing tag_dir will force updates to .doingrc in the current directory rather than offering a menudoing this thing, the first word was being lostdoing changes --changes --md (output changes only in Markdown format)2022-02-17 12:59
doing completion install SHELL will copy the default completion scripts to your ~/.local/share/doing folder and offer to symlink them to autoload directories. These scripts are generated with each release but will not include any custom commands or plugins in the completions.doing completion now uses subcommands, generate and install. The install command will write default scripts to ~/.local/share/doing/completion and link them into the appropriate autoload directory for the shell. The generate command will create new scripts that include any custom commands and plugins.Doing.setting('plugins.myplugin.setting') and Doing.set('plugins.myplugin.setting', value))doing completion --file FILE_PATH, if the file specified is not in an auto-load directory for the shell type, offer to symlink the output to an appropriate directorydoing help completion and its subcommandsDoing.configwiki example command--back flag for doing againdoing againdoing completion would fail if the terminal running it was narrow enough to wrap help output2022-02-14 12:42
doing changes --interactive will load up a changelog viewer using fzf. Because it makes me happy, that’s why.2022-02-14 11:39
doing changes --changes output2022-02-14 06:04
doing finish --update will overwrite any existing @done tag with a new date (current time or set with --at or --back)doing changes output when availableboldwhite, brightwhite, bg_bold_cyan, and bold_bg_cyan all work (for example)commands_accepting now accepts multiple arguments and a --bool flagchanges command can now output changes only (no version numbers) and defaults to raw Markdown if not a TTY or the --md flag is useddoing archive now accepts --after and --from date filters2022-01-23 16:14
doing commands [add|remove] allows interactive enabling and disabling of default and custom commands2022-01-23 09:25
2022-01-22 17:27
2022-01-22 15:52
--config_template TEMPLATE_KEY to override that commands default template.--template, which takes a template string containing %placeholders and overrides the commands default template output. Affects grep, last, on, recent, show, since, today, yesterdaydoing help almost always requires scrolling up. It now automatically paginates using your system $PAGER (or best detected option).doing tags takes a MAX_COUNT argument to limit results when searchingdoing tags --line flag to output tags in a single linedoing changes (which views the changelog) now accepts --lookup VERSION and --search SEARCH_PATTERNdoing changes --lookup accepts "< 2.1 > 2.0", "2.1.10-2.2", a specific version, or a version number with wildcards--tag "@doing" wouldn’t work where --tag "doing" would. Now properly ignoring @ symbols2022-01-21 14:53
2022-01-20 12:05
2022-01-20 11:49
doing select menudoing now, passing the arguments to that. So you can just write “doing this thing” instead of “doing now this thing”, as long as the first word of the arguments is not a recognized command.doing again should only mark the original repeating entry @done, not search for the last unfinished entrydoing finish --autodoing on wed when today is wednesday not returning resultsconfig set with a false value deleted the key from configconfig set with true or false value was inserting a quoted string2022-01-18 08:40
--interactive flags--interactive was called without search resultsBuild automation test
2022-01-18 07:26
--hilite option for doing search to highlight matches in search results (terminal output only)--hilite flag for show and view to highlight results when used with --search--ask when creating new entry via STDIN pipe2022-01-18 02:45
doing done --from "3pm to 3:15pm" to set start and end times with natural language stringdoing tag without arguments takes command line inputdoing now or doing later are run without arguments, interactively request necessary information (you can still use --editor to edit in your preferred editor)doing done --at no longer overrides --backdoing select -> output formatted empty outputdoing select --editor (was loading in selection order instead)--editor2022-01-17 07:25
doing select--note now accept --ask, which requests input via readline after creating the note. Multiple lines are allowed, hit return twice to end editing. Works alongside --note and --editor--search and --from filtering for import plugins--search, it’s already filtered. Separated --query from --search if you do want to populate the query string in addition to --search filtering--editor while adding an entry, include any note specified on the command line or via --ask for further editing--val flag for all display commands, allows tag value queries. Tag values are contained in parenthesis after the tag, e.g. @progress(50). Queries look like --val "done < two weeks ago", “project *= oracle” or “progress >= 50”. Wildcards allowed in value, comparators can be <, >, <=, >=, ==, *= (contains), ^= (begins with), $= (ends with). Numeric and date comparisons are detected automatically. Text comparisons are case insensitive. --val can be used multiple times in a command and you can use --bool to specify AND, OR, or NOT (default AND)doing tag now accepts a --value flag to define a value for a single tag, e.g. @tag(value)doing last --editor errors* and ? wildcards--delete flag for doing last to delete last entry--delete and --editor flags for doing search, batch edit and deletedoing tags --interactive wasn’t showing menu--age (oldest |
newest) option for view command |
--interactive optionsdoing commands_accepting which shows all commands that accept a given option, e.g. doing commands_accepting search shows all commands that take a search filterdoing changelog which outputs a paginated, formatted version of the change history.doing template --list now shows the file type of each templatedoing template html --savedoing recent on certain older ruby versionsdoing redo undoes a redodoing undo -i offers a list of available versions for selectiondoing undo repeatedly steps back through history, doing undo 5 jumps back 5 versionsdoing select, prompt for a date stringdoing reset accepts a date string argument to use as start date instead of current time if provideddoing tags lists tags used in any/all sections, sortable, with or without frequency countsdoing show --menu offers an interactive menu for selecting section and tag filters--tag filter can now handle wildcards in the tag names. * to match any number of characters, ? to match a single character.date_tags in config, an array of tags/patterns that will be recognized when parsing for natural language dates which are converted when saving new entries--search strings can contain quoted phrases and use +/- to require or ban terms, e.g. `–search ‘doing +coding -writing’doing undo historydoing redo (a.k.a. doing undo --redo) can be run multiple times, stepping forward through undo history. Can also take a count to jumpdoing show --menu will only offer tags that exist after any tag/search filters have been rundoing show @tag with --menu will first filter by the @tag, then do an OR search for tags selected from the menudoing reset without filter not automatically affecting most recent entryconfig set now preserves value type (string, array, mapping) of previous value, coercing new value if neededdoing undo historydoing redo (a.k.a. doing undo --redo) can be run multiple times, stepping forward through undo history. Can also take a count to jumpdoing reset without filter not automatically affecting most recent entryconfig set now preserves value type (string, array, mapping) of previous value, coercing new value if neededdoing config set -r key.path will delete a key from any config file, removing empty parent keysconfig list will list detected .doingrc files and the main config file in order of precedence - refactoring--before, --after, and --from date filters for select command--from flag for doing today and doing yesterday, filter by time range--from flag for doing search, filter by date/time range--before, --after, and --from can now filter on time ranges. If the date string given contains only a time (no day or date), it will be interpreted as a time range, meaning the date isn’t filtered, but only entries within the time range are shown/processedinterval_format setting to config (applies to root or any view/template) to set intervals/durations to human (2h 15m) or text (00:02:15)duration key to config (root or view/template). If set to true, will display durations by default (no need for --duration)--duration flag that will display an elapsed time if the entry is not marked @doneconfig set and selecting a local config will no longer write the entire config to the local .doingrc. Instead, a nested path to the particular setting will be added to the config file.finish --took 60m is supposed to backdate the start date if needed to finish at the current time and maintain an elapsed timeemacs -nw), Doing would fail to recognize that the executable was available.doing config set to set single config values from command linedoing config --udpate => doing config update, and doing config --dump => doing config dump--fuzzy option from all search commands)/r to tag transforms to replace original tagdoing view and doing show are confused, offer option to run the other commanddoing completion to generate shell completion scripts for zsh, bash, and fish--search and --not for cancel command--case flag for commands with --search. Can be (c)ase-sensitive, (i)nsensitive, or (s)mart (default smart, case insensitive unless search string contains uppercase letters)--exact flag to all commands with --search flag to force exact matching without requiring single quote prefix--not flag to all commands with filters (--tag, --search, --before, etc.) to negate the filter and return entries NOT matcheddoing help in fish shell--[no] from non-negatable optionsdoing plugins -t export -c not outputting columnsdoing config --update will add newly added config keys to your existing config file (handy with plugins that define their own config keys)%note template placeholder--interactive mode to act on results of doing grep--dump option for doing config to output a key.path config key as JSON, YAML, or raw output--no-color global flag--quiet and --verbose global flags--interactive--stdout--config_file global flag deprected, now uses $DOING_CONFIG environment variable so that config overrides can be available before the initial configuration is run--stdout or not a TTY, no color or output formatting--tag and --search for doing notedoing config finds local doingrc files, offers a menu for editingdoing finish--unfinished flag to finish last entry not marked @done (instead of last entry)--note flag to append a note when completing an entry--from with date spandoing rotate --keep wasn’t respecting keep value--rename option for tag command to replace tags--regex option for tag command, for --remove and --rename--auto now pulls from all sections, not just the section of the target entry--auto when matched item is last in list--no-menu option for select command to use --query as a filter and act on matching entries without displaying menu--before and --after time search to yesterday command--before and --after date search to search/grep command--tag_order to yesterday command--tag, --bool, and --search to view command--before and --after date search to view command--before and --after date search to show command--before and --after time search to today command--search filter to show commandcount config option for templates->recent--before DATE_STRING to archive and rotate commands--auto for finish commandrotate command for archiving entries to new filedoing view options, additional config keys for viewsdoing select action menudoing select -t "tag*" -r--tag and --search flags to tag command to tag all entries matching search termsdoing on tuesday to now but doing since tuesday just feels more intuitive.doing select to show menu of all tasks, searchable with fuzzy matching and the ability to perform certain tasks on multiple selections.doing done --took 30m setting the wrong @done timestamp when completing previous item--unfinished option to finish and cancel commandsdoing show --sort argument parsingdoing done --took=X results in completion date greater than current time, use current time as completion date and backdate the entry’s timestamp to fitdoing done with --took= and without --back= should set end time to start date plus --took value--search filter to doing archivedoing again --bool was ALL, should be ANDdoing again --tag= functionalitydoing again and not already completed--editor flag for doing last to edit last entry--tag= flag to filter doing last by tag--search= to filter doing last by text/regex search--search= for doing finish, finish last X entries matching searchtags_color as a primary config key to highlight @tags in displayed entries--editor improvements for all commands that use it--took throwing error--remove was adding tags if they didn’t existfinish --tag=TAG--tag and --bool filtering for again/resume, cancel--in flag for again/resume to specify to which section the new--tag= flag, finishing last entrydoing cancel to end X tasks without completion date--no-color option to view command--tag to show for compatibility--tag flag--archive flag on finish, done, and cancel causing error--tag= flag, finishing last entry--archive flag on finish, done, and cancel causing errordoing tag -a -c 0 (autotag all)again/resume-b) for --back on all commands that support itagain command to repeat last entry without @done tagrun_after configuration option to execute external script after any change--tag_sort to all subcommands with --totals option--totals-x to skip autotags and default_tags from global/local .doingrc--at flag for doing done, e.g. doing done --at=1:35pm --took=15m A new task I already finished--took=2.5hdid as a synonym for done subcommanddoing note operates on whatever is most recent, not just the last note in Currentlydoing tag with no count specified operates on most recent entry in any section, not just Currentlydoing tag with a count greater than 1 requires a section to be specifieddoing tagdoing recent to default to All sections instead of Currentlydoing today and yesterday to specify a sectiondoing templates to export default templates for HAML and CSShtml_template for haml and cssdoing note -e include the entry title so you know what you’re adding a note to-e include a comment noting that anything after the first line creates a noteundefined method [] for nil class error in doing view--stdout global option to send reporting to STDOUT instead of STDERR (for use with LaunchBar et al)%chompnote template variable (item note with newlines and extra whitespace stripped)only_timed key for view configs-e is calledshow tag filter-v option--only_timed option for view/show commands that only outputs items with elapsed timers (interval between start and done dates)--only_timed before chopping off --count #Dir.home issue--only_timed optionREADME.mddone command: making --took modify start time if --back isn’t specified--back and --took parsingnote command and --note flags for entry creation commands--totals, --[no-]times, --output [csv,html] options for yesterday command.-f flag to now command for finishing last task when starting a new one (Looks back for the last unfinished task in the list)--took option for done and finish for specifying intervals from the start date for the completion date--auto flag for finish and done that will automatically set the completion time to 1 minute before the next start time in the list. You can use it retroactively to add times to sequential todos.doing grep for searching by text or regexCurrently section--output html)--output csvarchive function on all sectionsdoing mark)doing archive \@done)doing yesterdaydoing done -r to remove last doing tag (optionally from -s Section)-f flag to specify alternate doing filemeanwhile command--csv)--output html)tags_color in view config to highlight tags at the end of the lines. Can be set to any of the %colors.-t on show and view will turn on time calculations%interval token in the appropriate template for it to show--totalsdoing done without argument tags last entry done-a archives themdoing finish or doing finish X marks last X entries done-a archives themdoing tag tag1 [tag2] tags last entry or -c X entriesdoing tag -r tag1 [tag2] removes said tag(s)tags and tags_booltags is a space-separated list of tags to filter the results bytags_bool defines AND (all tags must exist), OR (any tag exists), or NONE (none of the tags exist)order key (asc or desc) defines output sort order by dateAll to combine sectionsdoing show updatesall as a section-b sets boolean (AND, OR, NONE) or (ALL, ANY, NONE) (default OR/ANY)-c X to limit results-s to set sort order (asc or desc)-a to set age (newest or oldest)doing view commandopen command-a APPNAME (doing open -a TaskPaper)-b bundle_id (doing open -b com.sublimetext.3)-e switch for now, later and done commandsdoing now)doing views shows all available custom viewsdoing view without a view name will let you choose a view from a menudoing archive fixed so that -k X works to keep X number of entries in the sectionopen command-a APPNAME (doing open -a TaskPaper)-b bundle_id (doing open -b com.sublimetext.3)-e switch for now, later, and done commandsdoing now)Speaking of doing…
Brett is a writer and developer living in Minnesota, USA. You can follow him as ttscoff on Twitter, GitHub, Mastodon, and elsewhere.
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