shdo 0.3.0

shdo opens straight into a board, shows every available key at the bottom of the screen and syncs between machines with plain git. No server, no database, no account – just files you can read, edit and diff.

Why shdo?

• A program, not a pile of commands. Start shdo and you are on your board, with vim-style navigation and a key bar that always tells you what you can do next.
• Quick capture from the shell. shdo Pay invoice P1 due:fri @work adds a task without opening anything.
• Your data stays yours. One Markdown file per task with a small TOML header. Edit it in any editor, grep it, keep notes and checklists in it.
• Sync without conflicts. Tasks live in a git repository; s (or shdo sync) commits, pulls and pushes. One file per task means merge conflicts practically never happen.
• Deliberately small. Statuses, priorities, due dates, buckets and notes. No assignees, projects, tags or story points.

Features

• Kanban columns per status (Todo, Doing, Waiting, Done – configurable), sorted automatically by priority, due date and age
• Form for new and edited tasks with a live preview of recognized dates
• Buckets such as home and work, with a per-machine filter: show work tasks on the work laptop and home tasks at home, from the same repository
• Calendar sidebar with the number of tasks due per day and public holidays (Germany, all federal states)
• Markdown notes with checklists (☐ 1/3 on the card)
• 7 built-in themes – Tokyo Night, Nord, Gruvbox Dark/Light, Catppuccin Mocha/Latte, Terminal – plus your own
• English and German interface
• Shell completion, with task IDs, statuses and buckets for fish

Installation

shdo runs on Linux and macOS and needs git.

Prebuilt binary (Linux and macOS, x86_64 and ARM):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/AxelRHD/rust-shdo/releases/latest/download/shdo-installer.sh | sh

With Cargo (Rust 1.89 or newer):

cargo install shdo

From source:

git clone https://github.com/AxelRHD/rust-shdo
cd rust-shdo
cargo install --path .

Getting started

Run shdo. On the first start a short setup asks for

1. the language of the board (English or German),
2. the data directory (default ~/.local/share/shdo; an existing shdo directory is picked up as is),
3. optionally public holidays for the calendar.

You can change this later with shdo setup. To sync between machines, add a remote to the data directory once:

cd ~/.local/share/shdo
git remote add origin git@github.com:you/tasks.git

On another machine, clone that repository and point the setup at it.

The board

The key bar at the bottom always shows the keys for the current view; ? shows all of them.

Command line

The command line is always English and meant for quick capture and scripts.

shdo Pay invoice P1 due:fri @work   # new task; P1–P3, due: and @bucket anywhere
shdo -- ls is broken                # title that starts with a command name
shdo ls                             # board as text (honours the bucket filter, -a for all)
shdo done a3f                       # IDs can be shortened while unique
shdo mv a3f doing                   # status by key or name
shdo bucket a3f home                # set a bucket, "-" removes it
shdo edit a3f                       # open the file in $EDITOR
shdo sync                           # git add, commit, pull --rebase, push
shdo archive                        # move done tasks to archive/

Dates for due: work in English and German: 2026-10-24, 10/24, 24.10., +3d, +2w, +1m, today, tomorrow, mon … sun (the next one, never today).

Files

A task is a Markdown file named after its ID:

+++
title = "Quarterly report"
status = "todo"
prio = 1
due = 2026-10-26
bucket = "work"
created = 2026-10-22T10:41:00+02:00
moved = 2026-10-22T10:41:00+02:00
+++

Numbers are in the shared drive.

- [x] collect numbers
- [ ] write summary
- [ ] send to team

The data directory contains shdo.toml with the statuses and buckets, tasks/ and archive/. Statuses and buckets have a stable key used in the files and a name that is only displayed, so renaming never touches your tasks. Comments and unknown fields in these files are preserved when shdo writes them.

Configuration

Per-machine settings live in ~/.config/shdo/config.toml and are written by the setup, the theme picker and the filter:

language = "en"          # "en" or "de"
dir = "~/.local/share/shdo"
editor = "hx"            # defaults to $VISUAL, then $EDITOR
theme = "nord"
buckets = ["work"]       # shown buckets; empty = all
holidays = "de-bw"       # empty = none
show_done = true
show_calendar = true
auto_sync = false        # sync when the board opens and before it closes

With auto_sync = true the board syncs once in the background when it opens and once when you quit – only if there is something to send. It never syncs on every change; press s to sync in between. If the sync on quit fails, the board stays open with the error, and pressing q again quits without syncing.

Themes

Custom themes go into ~/.config/shdo/themes/<name>.toml and appear in the theme picker. Missing colors fall back to the default theme:

name = "My theme"

[colors]
bg = "#1a1b26"
fg = "#c0caf5"
border_active = "#9ece6a"

Available tokens: bg, fg, dim, border, border_active, title, accent, selection, prio_high, prio_low, overdue, today, done, key, warn, weekend, holiday. Colors are #rrggbb or ANSI names such as red or reset.

Shell completion

shdo completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/shdo.fish

Run shdo completions without arguments for bash and zsh. Fish also completes task IDs (with titles), statuses, buckets and due: values.

License

MIT