Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Announce: Pajamas 0.1.0 - Command line todo management

I've just started a new project, Pajamas, which is the beginnings of my ultimate workflow application.

It's deceptively simple it consists of a per project todo list, kept in a simple text file. The todo list is organised hierarchically using indentation (two-spaces) for structure. Each todo item occupies one line, and completed items are marked +done e.g.


This a big task
This is a sub-task +done
This is a sub-sub-task +done
This is another sub-task


Pajamas has three commands
  • next - This prints the next task that is not yet done along with its parent tags eg.

    This a big task
    This is another sub-task

  • done - This marks the current task as done
  • list - this lists all the tasks
My workflow using pajamas is
  1. Call pajamas-next
  2. If the task is immediately achievable, do it skip to 4
  3. If the task isn't immediately doable break it down into smaller sub-tasks, go-to 1.
  4. Call pajamas-done. Go-to 1.
For me this is the essence of iterative development, with such a simple process it remains easy to stay in the flow.

Pajamas @ GitHub