# onetaskgraph
One interface over the ticketing systems your work actually lives in.
Tasks, projects, labels and the dependencies between them are spread across Linear, GitHub
Projects and a folder of Markdown files, and every tool that wants to reach them ends up
reimplementing all three. `onetaskgraph` implements them once, behind a single query
surface: a command-line tool, the Rust engine crate's library API, and SDKs for Python and
TypeScript. Every consumer reaches the same engine, so their query semantics cannot drift.
Two properties make it different from a lowest-common-denominator wrapper:
- **A rich source is not reduced to a poor one's floor.** Each source declares what it can
do natively. The engine pushes those predicates down and compensates in memory for the
rest — and every response carries the plan it ran, so `--explain` shows you which source
filtered server-side and which one the engine narrowed for.
- **Nothing of your work is kept outside the system that owns it.** No cache, no index,
no local mirror. The engine holds at most one source page at a time and writes nothing
down — enforced by a supply-chain gate that refuses every embedded store and cache
crate, a sandboxed journey that fails if any file written during a run contains your
data, and an assertion that the same query asked twice reaches the source twice.
`copy` is not an exception to that, and the difference is worth stating plainly. A
destination write is at your explicit request, names its destination, goes through that
source's own write interface into that source's own store, and is never read back to
answer a query. A cache is a write nobody asked for that the engine reads back. Copying
a task into a folder of Markdown puts it in the plugin that now owns it; nothing is
kept anywhere else, and the sandboxed journey above drives `copy` and fails, naming the
path, if any file outside that destination's own store changes.
> **Status.** The plugin contract, the workspace, the gate, the configuration layer and the
> query engine are in place, and the binary answers every verb below. The three sources
> this product ships for your work — `local-md`, `linear` and `github-projects` — can all
> be read and written; none is read-only. A copy can still refuse a configured destination
> with no write side, such as a subprocess source whose capability handshake declares no
> writes, but that is a property of that configured source rather than of these plugins.
## Using it
```bash
onetaskgraph sources list
onetaskgraph task list [--source S]... [--label L]... [--not-label L]...
[--status S]... [--project P | --no-project]
[--search TEXT] [--in title|content|both]
[--limit N] [--page TOKEN] [--explain] [--allow-partial] [--json]
onetaskgraph task show <ID>
onetaskgraph task deps <ID> [--direction depends-on|depended-on-by]
onetaskgraph task copy <ID>... --to <SOURCE> [--match-by KEY] [--recreate] [--dry-run]
onetaskgraph project list / show / deps # the same flags, minus the project filter
onetaskgraph project copy <ID> --to <SOURCE> [--no-tasks] [--match-by KEY] [--recreate]
[--dry-run]
onetaskgraph document list / show # the same flags, minus --status
onetaskgraph document copy <ID>... --to <SOURCE> [--match-by KEY] [--recreate] [--dry-run]
onetaskgraph label list [--source S]...
onetaskgraph search <TEXT> [--in ...] [--kind task|project|both]
onetaskgraph config show # every setting and the layer it came from
onetaskgraph schema # the JSON Schema bundle both SDKs use
```
An `<ID>` is qualified: `work:ENG-142`. Repeating `--label` narrows — a second one is a
second requirement — and `--not-label` excludes. `--project` takes a qualified id, which
narrows the query to that project's own source, or a bare native id, which is asked of
every selected source.
A **document** is what lives in a project and is not work — a design note, a runbook, a
page somebody has to read. It carries no status and takes part in no dependency graph, so
`document` has no `--status` filter and no `deps` verb. What it does carry is a
**location**: where a reader can actually open it, as a link (`url …`) or as an absolute
path on the machine its source runs on (`path …`). `task show`, `project show` and
`document show` all print it, and `--json` carries the contract type's own shape —
`{"url": …}` or `{"path": …}` — so a program branches on which key is present. Not every
source has documents; one that says it has none is reported as holding none rather than as
having failed, and a copy naming it is refused before anything is read.
How a source *spells* a document is its own business. A GitHub Projects board has no
document type, so `github-projects` reads one as an ordinary issue whose title begins
`DESIGN: ` — the title you see has that prefix taken off, and writing a document puts it
back, so a design note copied out of a board and back returns the title it started with.
`docs/metadata.md` records the whole of that rule.
### Seeing which plan you got
`--explain` renders the plan the query ran, per source:
```console
$ onetaskgraph task list --label bug --explain
work:ENG-142 in-progress Rate-limit the sync loop
notes:2026-08 todo Write up the migration
plan:
work (linear) 1 page(s)
pushed down: label
notes (local-md) 3 page(s)
applied locally: label
```
Linear filtered server-side; the folder of Markdown could not, so the engine pulled pages
and narrowed them itself. Both answers are correct and you can see which you got.
`--json` carries the same plan as a field, so a script does not have to parse the prose.
### Writing tasks: Markdown in, ticket out
Authoring against a ticketing API is not something a person or an agent does well, and a
folder of Markdown files is. So that is how work is created here: write the files, read
them back through the CLI to be sure they parse, then copy them where your team works.
With `notes` configured as a `local-md` source rooted at `./notes`, create its task folder
and write `notes/tasks/rate-limit.md`:
```markdown
---
title: Rate-limit the sync loop
status: Todo
labels: [{id: local-reliability, name: reliability}]
metadata: {onepipeline.turn_budget: 12}
repositories: [github.com/acme/sync]
---
Back off when the API asks us to slow down.
```
Read it through the CLI before writing to the permanent `linear` destination, then copy
the qualified id the read returned:
```console
$ onetaskgraph task list --source notes
notes:rate-limit todo Rate-limit the sync loop
$ onetaskgraph task copy notes:rate-limit --to linear
```
The read is intentional: a malformed front matter block caught in a local file is cheaper
to fix than a parse failure first discovered while writing to somebody's ticketing system.
Projects use the same flow under `notes/projects/`, followed by `project list` and
`project copy`.
Editing is the same road in reverse — copy out, edit, copy back:
```console
$ onetaskgraph task copy work:T-1 --to notes
$ grep -A2 '^metadata:' notes/tasks/T-1.md
metadata:
onetaskgraph.origin: work:T-1
$ $EDITOR notes/tasks/T-1.md
$ onetaskgraph task copy notes:T-1 --to work
```
The copy back **updates** rather than duplicating because the copied file carries the id
it came from, under the reserved metadata key `onetaskgraph.origin`. Nothing anywhere
holds a mapping: the correspondence lives on the item, inside the plugin that owns it.
Two rules find the counterpart, in this order. If the item's origin names the destination,
that origin *is* the destination item and the copy updates it. Otherwise the destination
is searched for an item whose origin is the id being copied; found, it is updated, and not
found, one is created carrying that origin.
Which rule found it decides what the copy records there. A copy that got its counterpart
from the first rule is a copy **back**: the destination is the original, and the item being
copied is the one that came out of it — so the destination keeps the origin it already
holds, holding none included. Stamping it with the id of its own copy would destroy the
original's provenance, and the next ordinary copy from the store it was authored in would
match nothing and create a second item beside it. Every other copy records the id it was
copied from, which is what makes the next copy of it an update.
| `--dry-run` | Every read, no write, and the action each item would have got. |
| `--recreate` | An origin naming an item the destination no longer holds refuses by default, because creating there would duplicate work somebody deleted. This says create instead. |
| `--match-by KEY` | Delete or corrupt the origin key and neither rule can find the counterpart, so the next copy back creates a new item. This re-establishes the lost correspondence by matching on `title`, or on a metadata key of your choosing, without hand-editing ids. |
| `--no-tasks` | Copy a project on its own. By default `project copy` copies the project and every task in it, matching each task independently. |
Every field a copy read is written — title, content, status, labels, project,
repositories, metadata and the edges — except `url`, `location`, `created_at` and
`updated_at`, which are the destination's own. Nothing is silently dropped: a field the destination cannot
represent, or a metadata key it cannot carry, refuses the write and names it. A copy never
deletes work either, so a destination item the source no longer holds is left exactly as it
is and reported as `orphaned`.
**A copy either completes or leaves the destination as it found it.** A copy that cannot
finish — a field the destination refuses, a credential that expires, a rate limiter —
undoes what it has already written and takes back the items it created in that run, so the
retry starts from the destination you started from. That is what stops a half-written
project having to be re-run, and the re-run is the burst of writes that trips a hosted
destination's rate limiter. When the destination will not take one of them back, the
refusal says so and names what is still there rather than leaving you to find it.
`--json` gives one entry per item for a script to read:
```json
{"items": [{"source": "notes:ENG-142", "action": "updated", "destination": "work:ENG-142"}]}
```
`action` says which of the four things above happened to that item, and `destination` is
`null` only for a dry run that would have created something. The vocabulary itself is
published rather than restated here: it is the `CopyAction` root of `onetaskgraph schema`,
which is what both SDKs are generated from and what the journeys validate this output
against.
### Exit codes
| `0` | Success — every source asked, every source answered. |
| `1` | The command failed while running: an id that names nothing, a configuration it will not run on, a source name nothing configures. |
| `2` | The invocation itself was wrong — an unknown flag, a value out of range. |
| `4` | The query ran and at least one source did not answer. The others' results still stand and the failure is named on standard error. |
`--allow-partial` says a partial answer is acceptable and turns `4` into `0`. Nothing else
does: a run that lost a source never exits `0` unless you asked for that.
### Paging
`--limit N` gives you a page and, when there is more, the token for the next one:
```bash
onetaskgraph task list --limit 20
# ... rows ...
# next page: --page 5b7b22736f7572...
```
Rows are interleaved across the selected sources — one from each in configured-name order,
then the next from each — and within a source they keep that source's own order. The turns
carry on across page boundaries, so a walk returns the same rows in the same order whatever
page size you choose: `--limit 3` and `--limit 50` differ in how many round trips they cost
and in nothing else. The token is the engine's own; a source's cursor travels inside it
untouched, and a walk returns every row exactly once.
A token belongs to the query that produced it. Resuming it from a query that asks for
something else — another `--label`, another `--search`, another `--source`, the other
`--direction` — is refused rather than answered, because every cursor inside it is a
position in the result set the original query returned, and picking up there under new
filters returns real rows from a walk you are not doing. Change the query, drop `--page`.
## Install
The command-line tool ships as a self-contained binary. Once a release is cut, install it
whichever way suits your machine:
```bash
cargo install onetaskgraph # from crates.io
uv tool install onetaskgraph-cli # from PyPI, no Rust toolchain needed
npm install -g onetaskgraph-cli # from npm, no Rust toolchain needed
```
For Rust, the SDK surface is the engine crate itself rather than a separate wrapper
package. Add it when the application should link the engine, or add either subprocess SDK
when it should drive the installed binary:
```bash
cargo add onetaskgraph-core onetaskgraph-plugin-api serde_json
cargo add tokio --features macros,rt-multi-thread
uv add onetaskgraph-sdk # Python
bun add @onetaskgraph/sdk # TypeScript
```
This complete example constructs an engine over two in-memory sources, copies a task through
`Engine::copy`, inspects the outcome, and reads the destination back through the engine:
```rust
use onetaskgraph_core::{
Config, CopyItems, CopyRequest, CopyScope, Engine, Environment, GlobalId, Secrets,
};
use onetaskgraph_plugin_api::SourceName;
use serde_json::json;
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
let config = Config::from_document(json!({
"sources": {
"drafts": {
"plugin": "in-memory",
"config": {"tasks": [{
"id": "T-1",
"title": "Ship the guide",
"content": "Publish the Markdown workflow.",
"status": {"category": "todo", "name": "Todo"},
"labels": [],
"metadata": {},
"repositories": []
}]}
},
"work": {"plugin": "in-memory", "config": {}}
}
}))?;
let secrets = Secrets::load(Environment::default())?;
let engine = Engine::build(&config, &secrets);
let report = engine.copy(&CopyRequest {
items: CopyItems::new(vec!["drafts:T-1".parse::<GlobalId>()?])
.expect("a copy names at least one item"),
scope: CopyScope::Tasks,
destination: SourceName::new("work")?,
match_by: None,
recreate: false,
dry_run: false,
}).await?;
let outcome = &report.items[0];
assert_eq!(outcome.source.to_string(), "drafts:T-1");
assert_eq!(outcome.destination().unwrap().to_string(), "work:T-1");
assert_eq!(outcome.action.name(), "created");
println!("{} -> {} ({})", outcome.source,
outcome.destination().expect("the copy created a destination"),
outcome.action.name());
let copied = engine.task(outcome.destination().unwrap()).await?;
assert_eq!(copied.items[0].item.title, "Ship the guide");
println!("{}", copied.items[0].item.title);
Ok(())
}
```
Unlike the Python and TypeScript SDKs, which spawn the compiled binary, a Rust consumer
links `onetaskgraph-core` and calls `Engine` in process. The engine and its copy semantics
remain the single implementation in either case.
To work on the repository instead, clone it and run `just bootstrap`; `just --list` shows
the rest.
## Configure
One YAML document, `onetaskgraph.yaml`, discovered upward from the working directory and
layered over a user-level file at `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/onetaskgraph/config.yaml`:
```yaml
default_sources: [work, notes] # omitted means every configured source
page_size: 50
work:
plugin: linear
config: { api_key_env: LINEAR_API_KEY, team: ENG }
notes:
plugin: local-md
config: { root: ~/notes/tasks }
```
Every setting is reachable at three layers, lowest precedence first: **the file, then the
environment, then a command-line flag.**
An environment variable is `ONETASKGRAPH_` followed by the config path, each segment
upper-cased with `-` replaced by `_` and segments joined by a double underscore; a list is
comma-separated:
| `ONETASKGRAPH_PAGE_SIZE=100` | top-level `page_size` |
| `ONETASKGRAPH_DEFAULT_SOURCES=work,notes` | top-level `default_sources` |
| `ONETASKGRAPH_SOURCES__WORK__CONFIG__ROOT=/tmp/tasks` | the `root` of the source named `work` |
| `ONETASKGRAPH_SOURCES__GH_MAIN__PLUGIN=github-projects` | the plugin of the source named `gh-main` |
The mapping is unambiguous because a source name may not contain an underscore.
On the command line the same dotted path is `--set`, and a few common settings have named
flags of their own:
```bash
onetaskgraph config show --set sources.work.config.root=/tmp/tasks
onetaskgraph config show --page-size 100 --default-sources work,notes --json
```
`onetaskgraph config show` is what makes precedence something you can see rather than
something you have to reason about: it prints every setting, its value, and the layer it
came from — which file, which environment variable, or which flag — and `--json` renders
the same thing for a script.
### Credentials
A configuration document never holds a credential — it names the environment variable that
does (`api_key_env: LINEAR_API_KEY`). Before resolving sources the CLI reads
`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/onetaskgraph/secrets.env` (override with `ONETASKGRAPH_SECRETS_FILE`) as
`KEY=VALUE` lines with `#` comments, and applies each value **only where the process
environment does not already define that name** — so anything you exported wins. A missing
file is not an error. A credential is never printed, never in debug output, and never in a
log line.
There is exactly one name per credential everywhere — in that file, in the configuration,
in the documentation and in CI: `LINEAR_API_KEY` and `GH_PROJECTS_TOKEN`. Nothing anywhere
translates between spellings.
## Addressing
Every item is qualified by the source it came from and rendered `<source>:<native>` —
`work:ENG-142`, `notes:2026-08-inbox`. Parsing splits on the **first** colon, so a native
id may contain colons freely.
## Custom metadata and repositories
A task and a project each carry a caller-defined `metadata` map and the `repositories`
they concern, and a dependency edge names both its ends by kind and qualified id — so an
edge may cross projects, cross the task and project levels, and cross sources.
[`docs/metadata.md`](./docs/metadata.md) says which keys are reserved and where each source
keeps them.
## Writing a source in another language
A source that is not a Rust crate speaks a line-oriented JSON protocol over stdio:
[`docs/plugin-protocol.md`](./docs/plugin-protocol.md) specifies it completely — the
framing, the capability handshake, one method per trait method, and the error envelope.
Configure one with the `subprocess` plugin, which names the program to run and hands it
its own settings verbatim:
```yaml
sources:
notes:
plugin: subprocess
config:
command: /usr/local/bin/my-source
args: [--serve]
secrets: [LINEAR_API_KEY] # forwarded in the handshake; nothing else is
settings: { root: ~/notes } # this source's own `config:` block
```
A source behind that seam is a source like any other: it declares its own capabilities,
so a plan says `pushed down` for what it applies itself, and the engine compensates for
the rest exactly as it does in process.
`onetaskgraph-source` ships beside the main binary and is the reference implementation of
the plugin side — it hosts any built-in plugin over the same protocol, so you can read a
working peer beside the specification.
## Licence
MIT. See [`LICENSE`](./LICENSE).