narl-workspace/docs/wiki/Boards-and-Agenda.md

Boards and the agenda

Views

The board, the agenda, the calendar and the back of a card are views, and they have a screen of their own: the plan. S (or :plan) goes there — the board on the left, the agenda over the calendar on the right, and no list — and back to the documents, which wait behind it as they were left. The views are tiles like the documents', walked the same way.

key	what it does
S	to the plan screen, or back to the documents
b, t, C	to the board, the agenda or the calendar, on the plan screen
gt / gT	the next / previous tile
Ctrl-h / Ctrl-j / Ctrl-k / Ctrl-l	the tile that way
l past the last list, h in the agenda, j past its end	on into the tile beside
f	the focused tile fills the screen; again or Esc to leave
1 … 9	switch space; the plan stays, and the board shows that space's
q, Esc	from a card's back to the board; from the board, the agenda or the calendar back to the documents

The keys go to the tile with focus, which wears the light border and its key lit in its head; the other views keep their cursors, dimmed. What is opened from a view — a card's notes, a day of the calendar, an entry of the agenda — is a document, so it opens on the documents' screen, beside what is there, and S comes back to the plan. Each view is read again whenever it is gone to.

The plan is the same in every space, the way the desktop's special workspace stays up: a digit on the board shows that space's board, with the agenda still beside it. Each space keeps its own documents behind it, and they are there again on going back.

The board

Every space except the diary has a board. b, the board button on the rail, or :board shows it on the plan screen, and q or Esc goes back to the documents. It is the board of the space being browsed, or, in a space without one such as the diary, the last board shown. The head of the board names every space that has one, with the digit that goes there.

A new board has three lists: backlog, doing and done. The lists mean something by where they stand, not by their names:

• the first list is the inbox, where new cards land;
• the last list is done. A card is finished exactly when it is in the last list: moving it there stamps it, moving it out reopens it;
• the lists between are work in hand, which the agenda shows.

:list <name> adds a list in front of the last one, :list name renames the list under the cursor, and :list rm deletes it with its cards. Done cards older than a week fold away until z shows them.

key	what it does
h / l	to the list on the left / right
j / k	down / up the cards
J / K	move the card down / up its list
H / L	move the card to the list on the left / right
Space	into the done list, or back out to the inbox
o, c	a new card on this list
Enter	turn the card over: labels, description, checklist
gf	the card's notes, without turning it over
D	due date
R	rename the card
z	show done cards older than a week
F	a letter over every card; type it to jump there
x, dd	delete the card
q, Esc	close the board's tile

The back of a card

Enter on a card turns it over: a tile beside the board with its labels, its description and its checklist. It is the card under the board's cursor, so walking the board leafs through the backs, and D, R, H and L act on it as they do on the board.

key	what it does
j / k, gg / G	down / up the checklist, its first / last step
Space, x	tick the step, or untick it
o	a new step below the cursor (:task <text>)
r	reword the step (:task edit <text>)
J / K	move the step down / up
dd	drop the step
e, i, Enter	write the description
a	put a label on, or take it off (:label <name>)
gf	the card's notes, below
q, Esc	close the back, back to the board

The description is markdown, written in the same editor as a document, vim and all. It saves itself as the typing stops, as a document does; :q or Esc in normal mode leaves, and :q! lets go of what is not saved yet. Leaving the tile while writing keeps what is written. [[ links a document by its title, and the card then shows among that document's cards. A fenced block in a language is coloured the way nvim colours it, written and read.

Labels are lower case, and each name keeps its colour on every card and every board, without anything to set: the colour comes from the name. Tab on :label offers the ones the board already uses. The board shows a card's labels over its title, and ☑ 2/5 and ≡ under it when it has a checklist and a description.

A repeating card comes back with the same labels and the same checklist, every step open again.

Capturing a card

c in the tree opens :card on the command line. The card goes into the inbox of the space you are in, or of the first space with a board, and you stay where you were. Reading a document, :card makes the card about that document, and an empty title takes the document's. From outside the browser, see Capture.

Notes

gf on a card, or on its back, opens its notes: a document named after the card, among the documents. The first time, it is made in the folder you are browsing when that is in the card's space, so the notes land beside what they are about, and in the root of the space when it is not. S goes back to the board, on the same card.

The link is loose on purpose: deleting the document leaves the card, because the work is still open when its notes are gone.

A document's cards

A document knows the cards about it: the ones whose notes it is, and the ones whose description links to it with a [[title]] or an /n/ path. Under the line below its title, a second line says what is still open about it (card write the plan · doing, or cards 3 open) and the first date one is due. Clicking it, or gc, opens the cards part of the info sheet.

There, j/k picks a card. Space finishes it, H/L sends it along its board, D or :due sets its date, and :label and :repeat work too, all without going to the board. Enter turns it over on its board. o makes another card about the document.

Reading a document with just one open card about it, the card verbs act on that card with the sheet closed: :due fri while reading the plan dates the plan's card.

A card's description links the way a document's text does. Renaming or moving a document rewrites the links to it in card descriptions too.

The card in focus

:due, :repeat, :label and :done act on the card in focus: the one under the board's cursor, the one turned over, the one highlighted in the agenda, or a document's card as above.

Due dates

D on a card (or :due <when>) takes a date the way it is said:

you type	it means
today, td	today
tm, tomorrow	tomorrow
fri	the next Friday, never today
+3d, +2w	in three days, in two weeks
10-31	the next 31 October
2026-10-31	that day
-	no due date

Cards that come back

:repeat weekly, or the ↻ button on the rail, makes a card come back once it is done. The rules are daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and any +3d, +2w, +6m or +1y. :repeat - stops it.

Finishing such a card leaves a copy at the bottom of the inbox, with the same title, notes and rule, due on the next date. The next date counts on from the old due date, in WORKSPACE_TIMEZONE:

• a card due at noon stays due at noon across a change of the clocks;
• a card due on the 31st comes back on the last day of a shorter month, and on the 31st again where there is one;
• a card finished late skips the dates that have passed;
• a card without a due date counts from the moment it was finished.

The finished card gives up its rule, so reopening it and finishing it again does not make a second copy. The board and the agenda show the rule as ↻ weekly beside the date.

The agenda

t (or :agenda) gathers what needs you from every board at once, on the plan screen.

• late, today and this week: unfinished cards by due date;
• in hand: cards in a list between the inbox and done;
• whether the diary has an entry for today;
• on this day: diary entries from the same day in earlier years. A 29 February is remembered on the 28th in the years that have none.

key	what it does
j / k	down / up, on into the diary entries, then into the tile below
h	to the tile on the left
Enter	to the card on its own board, beside, or open the entry among the documents
Space	finish the card where it stands
D	due date
H / L	to the list left / right on its board
:	the command line with the agenda kept up, so :repeat acts on the card
T	today's diary entry
q, Esc	close the agenda's tile

The agenda opens by itself once a day when something is late or due. "Today" is the day in WORKSPACE_TIMEZONE, the same as for the mails, so a browser in another timezone groups the cards the same way. The bar shows the late and today counts whenever either is above zero. With mail set up, cards due today are mailed in the morning too; see Backup and mail.