t — Eisenhower method task management

Reminders.app, sorted into what matters.

t is a macOS command-line tool that turns your Mac Reminders into an Eisenhower (urgent/important) task matrix, right in the terminal. It reads and writes the same reminders your Reminders.app already shows — there's no separate database or sync step — and prints them as a four-quadrant box-drawing grid so you can see at a glance what to do, plan, delegate, or eliminate. Every reminder gets a short hex key so you can complete, delete, or re-prioritize it with a couple of keystrokes. It's a single-user, single-machine tool built for one person's workflow, not a task-management platform — no sharing, no sync targets beyond Reminders itself, no mobile app.

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Table of Contents

• Features
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Usage
• Examples
• Known Limitations
• Contributing
• License

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Features

• Uses Reminders.app as the backend — no separate database; reminders you add with t show up in Reminders.app and vice versa
• Four-quadrant Eisenhower matrix rendered with Unicode box-drawing characters and ANSI 256-color, sized to your terminal width
• Short hex keys (3 characters, e.g. 9d2) to reference any reminder without retyping its title
• Priority names or digits — use ui or 2 interchangeably on the command line
• Fast mutations — complete, delete, or move (re-prioritize) one or more reminders in a single command

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Prerequisites

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later — the app targets .macOS(.v13) and uses EventKit, which is macOS-only
• Swift 5.9 toolchain or later (only needed to build from source; ships with recent Xcode / Xcode Command Line Tools)
• Reminders access — macOS will prompt for permission (com.apple.security.personal-information.calendars entitlement) the first time t runs; you must grant it for t to see or modify anything

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Installation

There's no packaged distribution yet — build from source with Swift Package Manager.

From source

git clone git@github.com:PeteRichardson/t.git
cd t
make build

make build runs swift build and then ad-hoc code-signs the resulting binary with the Reminders entitlement (t.entitlements). This step matters: plain swift build/swift run produce a binary with no entitlements, so Reminders access won't work reliably from it. Use make build (or make release for an optimized binary) whenever you need a binary that can actually talk to Reminders.

The signed binary lands at .build/arm64-apple-macosx/debug/t (or .build/release/t after make release). Put it on your PATH, e.g.:

ln -s "$(swift build --show-bin-path)/t" /usr/local/bin/t

Verify

t h

should print the usage/help text (there's no --version flag).

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Quick Start

$ t ui Change Netflix password     # adds an urgent, important reminder
$ t

Each reminder shows up with a 3-character hex key that you use to reference it in later commands:

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Usage

t [<command> <options>]

With no arguments, t just lists current reminders.

Command	Description
t <priority> <title...>	Add a reminder. <priority> is a name (see table below) or its digit 0–9; an unrecognized first word is treated as part of the title at priority 0.
t c <hash...>	Mark one or more reminders complete
t d <hash...>	Delete one or more reminders
t m <priority> <hash...>	Move one or more reminders to a new priority
t h	Print usage

<hash> is the 3-character hex key shown next to each reminder.

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Examples

Add a reminder

t ui Change Netflix password     # urgent & important
t 1 Change Netflix password      # same thing, using the digit form

Complete, delete, or move reminders

t c 9d2           # mark 9d2 complete
t d 9d2           # delete 9d2
t m uni a28       # move a28 to priority uni (urgent, not important, normal)

Priority reference

The priority you pass determines both which quadrant a reminder lands in and its sort order within that quadrant:

     uih (1)   |    nuih (4)
     ui  (2)   |    nui  (5)
     uil (3)   |    nuil (6)
     -----------------------
     unih (7)  |
     uni  (8)  |    nuni (0)
     unil (9)  |

Name	Priority	Description	Appropriate Action
uih	1	urgent & important (high)	DO these tasks!
ui	2	urgent & important (normal)	DO these tasks!
uil	3	urgent & important (low)	DO these tasks!
nuih	4	not urgent & important (high)	PLAN these tasks!
nui	5	not urgent & important (normal)	PLAN these tasks!
nuil	6	not urgent & important (low)	PLAN these tasks!
unih	7	urgent & not important (high)	DELEGATE these tasks!
uni	8	urgent & not important (normal)	DELEGATE these tasks!
unil	9	urgent & not important (low)	DELEGATE these tasks!
nuni	0	not urgent & not important	ELIMINATE these tasks!

See the Eisenhower Method.

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Known Limitations

• macOS only — built on EventKit, which doesn't exist outside Apple platforms
• Hash collisions are possible — a reminder's key is just the first 3 characters of its EventKit calendarItemIdentifier; with enough reminders, two could collide and share a key
• Only the default reminders list — t reads/writes eventStore.defaultCalendarForNewReminders(); there's no way to point it at a different Reminders list
• No configuration — priority names, colors, and layout are fixed in the source; there's no config file or flags to customize them
• Rendering has known rough edges — EisenhowerConsoleView uses hard-coded width offsets for layout; there's an open TODO to clean these up, so terminal-width edge cases may render oddly
• Debug builds can trap on startup — an assert requires every cached reminder to be either incomplete or completed today; this should always hold via the fetch predicates, but violating it traps in Debug builds
• Plain swift build/swift run won't get Reminders access — see Installation; you need make build/make release for a working binary

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Contributing

No CONTRIBUTING.md yet. In the meantime:

git clone git@github.com:PeteRichardson/t.git
cd t
swift build
swift test

This project reads and writes your real Reminders data — be careful running c/d/m while developing, since they complete, delete, and move actual reminders. Open an issue before starting significant work.

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License

No license file is currently present in this repository.