now

This project is heavily inspired by Frame, and implements a similar behavior using a CLI and data stored in a markdown file for greater accessibility.

What is this?

now is a minimal, opinionated, terminal-based tool for reminding you what to focus on.

now treats all work as a tree, where higher items are broader, and lower items are more specific.

- Accomplish quarterly goals
  - Learn rust
    - Take a course for beginners
      - Open rust-lang.org/learn @
  - Document the spacing scale in the design system
    - Review examples of good documentation
      - Check out storybook's projects showcase
      - Search briefly for other resources

now will highlight the immediate item you're focused on, ▶︎ Open rust-lang.org/learn, and display that item's ancestors as a breadcrumb trail Accomplish quarterly goals / Learn rust / Take a course for beginners, providing just enough context for what could be a very specific task.

Installation

Install the core CLI (no Raycast extension):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shanberg/now/v0.1.0/dist/install.sh | bash

To install from the latest development branch: NOW_REF=main before the URL, or use main in the path instead of v0.1.0. Run now --version to confirm the installed version.

Using now

• After installing, start now in your terminal with now tui. Open it again in the same directory to access the same set of tasks.

• Start with broad tasks. If you're making progress, continue. If at any point your work becomes unclear or too broad, narrow your focus to something more specific and actionable. When you're done with something, now deletes it and moves your focus to the next actionable item.

• now respects yak-shaving by not asking you to think about subtasks, headings, or working contexts. There is only a simple, ephemeral tree.

• Try using now in VSCode with the *.now.md file for an overview of available work.

  

API / integrations

Non-TUI commands (status, complete, add, later, edit, switch) and the JSON commands use the focus file in the current directory, or the path in NOW_FILE when set. They do not prompt to create a file; use now tui for interactive creation.

• NOW_FILE — When set, all commands use this path as the focus file (absolute or relative to cwd). Use $HOME/.now/focus.now.md or an absolute path; ~ is not expanded.
• now init [root-name] — Creates the focus file at NOW_FILE with initial content if it does not exist. Requires NOW_FILE. Optional root-name sets the root focus label (e.g. app or document name); omitted or empty → “Root Focus”. Used by the Raycast extension for “Create Focus File”.
• now json focus — Writes one JSON object to stdout: focus, breadcrumb, key, isLeaf, isRoot. Use from Raycast, One Thing, or other tools.
• now json items — Writes a JSON array of { display, key } for each focusable item.
• now json preview — Writes markdown to stdout: breadcrumb, focus line, and a code block of all items with focus/selected markers. Optional --selected-key KEY and --action complete|add|later|wrap|edit for action-specific placeholders. Used by the Raycast list detail view and other consumers.
• --emit-json — For mutation commands (complete, add, later, edit, switch, wrap, move), pass --emit-json as the last argument to print one line of JSON { "focus": { ... }, "items": [ ... ] } to stdout after the mutation. Used by the Raycast extension so it can update in place without re-reading the file.

Example for Raycast or One Thing:

NOW_FILE=$HOME/.now/focus.now.md now json focus

Parse stdout to get the current focus string and e.g. open one-thing:?text=<focus>.

A Raycast extension in this repo (extensions/raycast/) adds a menu bar command and a list command that use the JSON API. See extensions/raycast/README.md for setup. The extension can tie the frontmost app’s document to a Now file and suggest the same file when you rename or move the document (resolution by filename, then path).

Development

• Run tests: deno task test
• Install dev version (so the Raycast extension and your shell use this repo’s build): from the repo root run ./dist/install-local.sh. It compiles and copies the binary to /usr/local/bin/now (sudo required).
• Code quality: use Valknut with path set to src to validate application code (health gate passes for src; full repo includes tests and may report lower scores).

Releasing the core app (version in src/consts.ts and deno.json): run deno task test, then deno task bundle and deno task compile. Tag the release (e.g. git tag v0.1.0) and push the tag. The install script at that tag will fetch dist/bundle.js from the same tag. Optionally create a GitHub Release and attach dist/now for macOS/Linux.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, January 2004.