eph

A simple, transparent CLI task management tool.

Focus on doing, not managing

eph follows a two-point philosophy:

• Tasks are simple & focused
• The tool is transparent & fluid

Distinct Features

eph differs from the numerous other CLI task managers in a few ways:

1. GitHub-backed CRDT syncing

   • Ensures multiple devices/users can modify independently and be assured of convergence on sync

2. Keyboard driven (Neovim inspired) and fluid interface

   • The design is opinionated but rewards leaning into the design with a frictionless workflow

3. Preference for fewer features

   • Simplicity implies a lower likelihood of bugs and a more consistent (and hopefully pleasant) experience

Implementation

The app has three primary layers:

• The interaction layer (commands/)

  • Handles user interaction via the CLI or TUI

• The application layer (app/, task/)

  • Serves as the logic layer between the user and storage

• The storage layer (storage/)

  • Interacts with the file system to store and load tasks

This is an extremely common approach because it's clean and simple. Since eph is not architecturally complex, this is an effective way to keep the data flow modular while avoiding unnecessary complexity.

The primary tradeoffs of the current implementation are:

• We read and write all tasks for all actions except for the addition of a new task.

  • This does increase resource usage, but task lists would have to become unrealistically large for the performance difference to be perceivable. And the simplicity of this design makes desiging a correct and maintainable implementation far easier.

• Using the stored task list as the only source of truth.

  • In a similar vein to the previous tradeoff, we sacrifice a small amount of performance (in more common file system interactions) in exchange for simplicity. In this instance, we don't have to balance an in-memory and on-disk version of the task list.