December 6, 2025
Date wars, phone fights, terminal delights
Show HN: Tascli, a command line based (human) task and record manager
Terminal to-do app drops, and the internet fights over phones, dates, and privacy
TLDR: Tascli is a new terminal-based to-do and logging tool that keeps everything local. The crowd loved the speed but battled over missing phone integration, European date formats, recurrence logic (rent vs lawn), and privacy—plus the usual Taskwarrior and Emacs org-mode shoutouts—highlighting the tug-of-war between convenience and control.
Tascli, a new command-line to-do and life-log tool, just slid into the terminal crowd—local database, speedy commands, recurring tasks, even “records” for tracking stuff like feedings. But the feature list was quickly drowned out by the comments, where the community turned it into a full-on productivity cage match. The loudest chorus: phone or bust. One veteran compared it to Taskwarrior and praised integrations, but said without easy mobile access, it’s hard to make it a daily habit. Cue the date wars: Europeans demanded dd/MM/yyy, Americans clutched their calendars, and the thread briefly turned into a geography quiz. A sharp-eyed commenter asked the nerdiest practical question: does “mow lawn every other week” work differently from “pay rent on the 17th”—because it should. That sparked a mini debate on what “recurring” really means in real life. Then came the privacy panic: some worried that task lists “describe you pretty well,” and with AI features like “Recall” sniffing around, local-only tools feel safer than ever. Meanwhile, the Emacs crowd did a drive-by plug for org-mode, as is tradition. Verdict from the pit: fans love the speed and local vibes, skeptics want phone sync yesterday, and everyone’s joking about calendars while secretly checking their overdue tasks.
Key Points
- •Tascli is a CLI tool for managing tasks and records from a Unix terminal.
- •Installation is available via Cargo and Homebrew, with data stored locally in a configurable SQLite database using rusqlite.
- •Tasks support deadlines, categories, and recurring schedules (e.g., daily, monthly on a specific date).
- •Listing tasks shows index, category, content, and deadline, with status indicators for recurring and completed tasks; marking tasks as done generates records.
- •Records can be created with categories and specific timestamps, listed by time ranges (e.g., last day), and searched.