Alas by Hackberry

--schedule-tasks

Alas allows keeping a list of scheduled tasks in a separate file. For example:

# My Scheduled Tasks

- Meeting with John (on 2022-05-12)
- Tina's birthday (every year on 10-11)
- Run 20 minutes (every Monday)
- Run 20 minutes (every Thursday)
- #work - Weekly meeting (every Tuesday)
- #work - Deploy new version (every weekday)
- #work - Generate monthly report (every month)
- #work - Generate quarterly report (every 3 months)

You can then run the following command to insert matching scheduled tasks into your plan:

alas --insert-days 3 --schedule-tasks scheduled.md plan.md

Alas supports the following schedule options:

  • Specific day of the week - every Monday, every Tuesday, etc.
  • On weekdays - every weekday - any day of the week except Saturday and Sunday.
  • The first day of the month - every month.
  • The last day of the month - every last day.
  • The last Friday of the month - every last Friday.
  • The first day of the quarter - every 3 months - January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, October 1st.
  • A specific day every year - every year on 05-15.
  • A specific date - on 2025-05-15.

Note: Alas will insert scheduled tasks only for days that are already present in the plan. If a day doesn’t exist, --schedule-tasks won’t insert a day. This means that it’s best to use --schedule-tasks in combination with --insert-days. Alas will make sure that --insert-days is always executed before --schedule-tasks.

If you don’t use --insert-days, you need to insert empty days manually or in some other way before running --schedule-tasks.

Missed Scheduled Tasks

If you don’t run Alas every day, it’s possible to miss scheduling a task. If a task scheduling is missed, the task will be scheduled the next time you execute --schedule-tasks.

Alas will schedule only missed tasks that are not older than 30 days.

Missed tasks are marked. For example - Review logs (missed on 2022-09-05).