aven

aven is a local-first task manager for humans and coding agents. It is built as a personal, power-user task system: one overview across projects, task capture from wherever work appears, first-class agent workflows, workspace isolation, and a polished terminal UI.

Docs: https://aven.raine.dev

Why aven?

• Offline-first, repo-independent storage. Tasks live in a local SQLite database, not in tracked files inside each repo. Task capture and agent updates stay independent from git state, branches, worktrees, and checkouts.

• Optional self-hosted sync. Keep the local-first workflow and make the same tasks available across laptops, agents, and other devices through a server you control.

• Projects map to repos. Each repository becomes a project by default, created on demand when you add its first task.

• Agent-first CLI, human-first TUI. Agents get token-efficient output, stable refs, and commands for capturing follow-up work, updating tasks, and preserving context from AI coding agents. Humans get a polished, keyboard-first TUI with project views, filters, sorting, task detail, undo, mouse support, and command palette.

• Stable task refs. Stable, unique Jira-style refs like APP-7KQ9 work offline and show the task's project at a glance.

• Workspaces are first class. Personal and work tasks can share the same tool without sharing the same visible task universe.

• Markdown-native tasks. Tasks carry Markdown descriptions and append-style notes, so context stays with the task.

• Fast capture from anywhere. Natural-language task intake, tmux popup capture, and agent-friendly commands make it easy to add tasks.

Inspired by Taskwarrior. See Why not Taskwarrior?.

Quick start

Install with the release script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raine/aven/main/scripts/install | bash

Or install with Homebrew:

brew install raine/aven/aven

Open the TUI:

aven tui

See Getting started for first-run usage.

Documentation

• What is aven?
• Getting started
• Concepts
• Configuration
• TUI
• Agents
• Sync and backups

Why not Taskwarrior?

I built this to replace Taskwarrior for me. Taskwarrior is great but it was not designed around coding agents as first-class users.

• Task ids need to be stable, short, and visible in normal command output. UUIDs are ugly.
• Taskwarrior's CLI tries to be the human interface, which makes it unergonomic for agents to work with. I want the CLI to primarily be an agent interface, and the TUI to be optimized for humans.
• Tasks need first-class Markdown descriptions and notes, not references to sidecar files that only exist on one machine.
• Workspaces should be part of the model, so personal and work tasks can be isolated without shell aliases or database juggling.
• There is no adequate TUI, or GUI in general.

Rather than adding hacks on top of Taskwarrior, I want to own the full stack and make my own task manager. AI coding makes that reasonable side project instead of a fantasy.