gtd.py

A Fast Command-line Interface for Trello

This is a command-line tool that enables you to add, sort, and review cards on Trello rapidly. It is designed to reduce the amount of friction between your thoughts and your TODO list. If you never leave the terminal, gtd.py will feel right at home. It has tab-completion throughout, machine-readable --json and --tsv flags, a grep subcommand, and an interactive REPL mode.

The project is named "gtd.py" because it was initially built as a tool to maintain a Trello board using the GTD task tracking method. I've been actively using this tool for GTD since the first commit; if you're trying to use GTD with Trello this is the tool for you.

Usage

In the following examples I'll be working with a sample board, that I created like so:

$ gtd add board PublicShowTest
Added board PublicShowTest
$ echo "board: PublicShowTest" >> ~/.config/gtd/gtd.yaml
$ gtd add list 'To Do'
Successfully added list <List To Do>!
$ gtd add list 'Weekly Tasks'
Successfully added list <List Weekly Tasks>!
$ for task in 'Do dishes' 'Clean bathroom' 'Write some python' 'Eat a sandwich'; do gtd add card "$task"; done
Successfully added card "Do dishes"!
Successfully added card "Clean bathroom"!
Successfully added card "Write some python"!
Successfully added card "Eat a sandwich"!

Looking Around

The show subcommand allows you to view what's on your board right now. Let's take a look around the new board.

$ gtd show lists
Weekly Tasks (5f679dbc195e7885699ceb64)
To Do (5f679d625b4bbd1a91878fb8)
Doing (5f679d625b4bbd1a91878fb9)
Done (5f679d625b4bbd1a91878fba)
$ gtd show cards
Fetching cards  [########################################################################################################]  100%
+-------------------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| name              | list         | tags | desc | due | activity   | id                       | url                           |
+-------------------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Clean bathroom    | Weekly Tasks |      |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de5b92a1708bd7c8c93 | https://trello.com/c/ds3tuegh |
| Do dishes         | Weekly Tasks |      |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b | https://trello.com/c/8qBVAraN |
| Eat a sandwich    | Weekly Tasks |      |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de818062617023a4405 | https://trello.com/c/o5Oph6AD |
| Write some python | Weekly Tasks |      |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f | https://trello.com/c/fflo7zzp |
+-------------------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+

The show cards command will return all the cards which match your supplied arguments as a table, in JSON format, or in TSV.

# Show cards from the list "Inbox" matching a regular expression on their titles
$ gtd show cards -l Inbox --match 'https?'
# Show cards which have no tags but have due dates, in pretty-printed JSON format
$ gtd show cards --no-tags --has-due --json
# Closed cards which have attachments and are tagged as "Pictures"
$ gtd show cards --status closed --attachments -t Pictures

Similarly, grep does what you would expect:

$ gtd grep dishes
+-----------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| name      | list         | tags | desc | due | activity   | id                       | url                           |
+-----------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Do dishes | Weekly Tasks |      |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b | https://trello.com/c/8qBVAraN |
+-----------+--------------+------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+

It also faithfully implements some flags from GNU grep, including -c, -i, and -e! An invocation of this command is similar to a longer invocation of show: gtd grep 'some_pattern' is equivalent to gtd show cards -m 'some_pattern'.

# Filter all cards based on a regex
$ gtd grep 'http.*amazon'
# or multiple regexes!
$ gtd grep -e '[Jj]ob' -e 'career' -e '[oO]pportunity?'
# Count matches of a case-insensitive pattern
$ gtd grep -ci 'meeting'

Creating Things

add takes care of your needs for creating new:

• Cards
• Tags
• Lists
• Boards

The add tag, add list, and add board subcommands all work pretty much the same way.

$ for tag in Household Food Programming; do gtd add tag "$tag"; done
Created tag "Household"
Created tag "Food"
Created tag "Programming"

The command you'll probably use most frequently is add card.

$ gtd add card 'Purchase a pomelo'
Successfully added card "Purchase a pomelo"!

You can also specify a description for the new card with -m. New cards are put in the first list by default, so when you're laying out a board, make your first list the "inbox". You can also omit the title argument, like so:

# Open $EDITOR so you can write the card title
$ gtd add card
Successfully added card "This was written in vim"!

Manipulating Cards in Bulk

Frequently it's useful to move a whole bunch of cards at once, tag cards that match a certain parameter, or do other single actions repeatedly across a bunch of cards. To accomplish this, use the batch command. All the subcommands of batch are interactive, so you'll be prompted before anything is modified.

$ gtd batch tag -l 'Weekly Tasks'
Card 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b
  Name:         Do dishes
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:27 (1600626147)
  Age:          0:12:18.823795
Enter a tag name to toggle it, <TAB> completes. Ctrl+D to exit
gtd.py > tag > Household
Added tag Household
gtd.py > tag >
Card 5f679de5b92a1708bd7c8c93
  Name:         Clean bathroom
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:29 (1600626149)
  Age:          0:12:31.717111
Enter a tag name to toggle it, <TAB> completes. Ctrl+D to exit
gtd.py > tag > Household
Added tag Household
gtd.py > tag >
Card 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f
  Name:         Write some python
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:31 (1600626151)
  Age:          0:12:43.708735
Enter a tag name to toggle it, <TAB> completes. Ctrl+D to exit
gtd.py > tag > Programming
Added tag Programming
gtd.py > tag >
Card 5f679de818062617023a4405
  Name:         Eat a sandwich
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:32 (1600626152)
  Age:          0:12:46.228887
Enter a tag name to toggle it, <TAB> completes. Ctrl+D to exit
gtd.py > tag > Food
Added tag Food
gtd.py > tag >

A few things there - the tag names are fuzzy matched on a python-prompt-toolkit interactive prompt that's case insensitive. Moving from one card to the next in this context happens with Ctrl+D, a convention that's used throughout the nested menu system. Getting out of the interface is done with Control+C. Let's put together this batch knowledge with some stuff we've seen already...

$ gtd add tag 'Shopping'
Created tag "Shopping"
$ gtd batch tag --no-tags
Card 5f679ff8f48c48484a2809db
  Name:         Purchase a pomelo
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:31:20 (1600626680)
  Age:          0:10:00.322370
Enter a tag name to toggle it, <TAB> completes. Ctrl+D to exit
gtd.py > tag > Food
Added tag Food
gtd.py > tag >
$ gtd show cards -l 'Weekly Tasks'
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| name                    | list         | tags        | desc | due | activity   | id                       | url                           |
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Clean bathroom          | Weekly Tasks | Household   |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de5b92a1708bd7c8c93 | https://trello.com/c/ds3tuegh |
| Do dishes               | Weekly Tasks | Household   |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b | https://trello.com/c/8qBVAraN |
| Eat a sandwich          | Weekly Tasks | Food        |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de818062617023a4405 | https://trello.com/c/o5Oph6AD |
| Purchase a pomelo       | Weekly Tasks | Food        |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679ff8f48c48484a2809db | https://trello.com/c/K6N4ilHZ |
| This was written in vim | Weekly Tasks | Programming |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f67a0180ce40186bbff7cf6 | https://trello.com/c/o8vucw6f |
| Write some python       | Weekly Tasks | Programming |      |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f | https://trello.com/c/fflo7zzp |
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+

Now we've tagged all those new cards in very few keystrokes! Let's move them to more appropriate lists based on their status.

$ gtd batch move -l 'Weekly Tasks'
Card 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b
  Name:         Do dishes
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Household
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:27 (1600626147)
  Age:          0:21:53.605262
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
[a] Doing
[s] Done
[d] To Do
[f] Weekly Tasks
Press the character corresponding to your choice, selection will happen immediately. Ctrl+D to cancel
Moved to To Do
Card 5f679de5b92a1708bd7c8c93
  Name:         Clean bathroom
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Household
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:29 (1600626149)
  Age:          0:21:57.033431
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
Card 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f
  Name:         Write some python
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Programming
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:31 (1600626151)
  Age:          0:21:59.924228
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
[a] Doing
[s] Done
[d] To Do
[f] Weekly Tasks
Press the character corresponding to your choice, selection will happen immediately. Ctrl+D to cancel
Moved to To Do
Card 5f679de818062617023a4405
  Name:         Eat a sandwich
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Food
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:32 (1600626152)
  Age:          0:22:04.439588
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
[a] Doing
[s] Done
[d] To Do
[f] Weekly Tasks
Press the character corresponding to your choice, selection will happen immediately. Ctrl+D to cancel
Moved to Doing
Card 5f679ff8f48c48484a2809db
  Name:         Purchase a pomelo
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Food
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:31:20 (1600626680)
  Age:          0:13:25.517654
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
[a] Doing
[s] Done
[d] To Do
[f] Weekly Tasks
Press the character corresponding to your choice, selection will happen immediately. Ctrl+D to cancel
Moved to To Do
Card 5f67a0180ce40186bbff7cf6
  Name:         This was written in vim
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Tags:         Programming
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:31:52 (1600626712)
  Age:          0:12:57.808064
Want to move this one? (Y/n)
[a] Doing
[s] Done
[d] To Do
[f] Weekly Tasks
Press the character corresponding to your choice, selection will happen immediately. Ctrl+D to cancel
Moved to Done

Here are some more ideas for you to play with:

# Find all cards with a URL in their title and move those URLs into their attachments
$ gtd batch attach
# Set the due dates for all cards in a list containing the substring "Week"
$ gtd batch due -l Week
# Change the due date for all cards that have one already
$ gtd batch due --has-due

Bringing It all Together

What if you don't know what kind of action you want to take on a card before you invoke gtd? Well, we provide a nice menu for you to work on each card in turn. The menu is kinda REPL-like so if you're a terminal power user (truly, why would you use this tool unless you're already a terminal power-user) it'll feel familiar. The menu is built using python-prompt-toolkit so it has nice tab-completion on every command available within it. You can type help at any time to view all the commands available within the REPL. If you get lost, use the help REPL command.

$ gtd review -l 'To Do'
Card 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b
  Name:         Do dishes
  List:         To Do
  Tags:         Household
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:27 (1600626147)
  Age:          0:26:33.816457
gtd.py > description
# Editor session happened here
gtd.py > print
Card 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b
  Name:         Do dishes
  List:         To Do
  Tags:         Household
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:27 (1600626147)
  Age:          0:26:51.939956
  Description
    Hello README!
gtd.py > next
Card 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f
  Name:         Write some python
  List:         To Do
  Tags:         Programming
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:31 (1600626151)
  Age:          0:26:55.298909
gtd.py > duedate
gtd.py > duedate > Oct 01 2020
Due date set
gtd.py > print
Card 5f679de74d9e0e69f717686f
  Name:         Write some python
  List:         To Do
  Tags:         Programming
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:22:31 (1600626151)
  Age:          0:27:16.702654
  Due:          2020-10-01 00:00:00
  Remaining:    10 days, 5:10:12.297117
gtd.py > quit
$

Deleting Things

The delete subcommand allows you to get rid of lists & cards. By default, cards are archived rather than deleted. You can override this behavior with the -f/--force flag to delete cards. Lists may not be deleted, so they are archived when you run delete list.

$ gtd add card 'cannon fodder' && gtd delete cards -m cannon
Successfully added card "cannon fodder"!
Card 5f67a4df77046c54669bbde0
  Name:         cannon fodder
  List:         Weekly Tasks
  Created:      2020-09-20 14:52:15 (1600627935)
  Age:          0:00:02.914247
Delete this card? (y/N)
Card archived!

Here are some other examples of delete:

# Delete without intervention all cards containing the string "testblah"
$ gtd delete cards --noninteractive --force -m 'testblah'
# Delete the list named "Temporary work"
$ gtd delete list "Temporary work"

Revisiting show

Now that we've added a lot more to our sample board, let's try some more advanced examples of show cards. This command is the most flexible one of the bunch, so definitely try it out for yourself.

$ gtd show cards -t Household
+----------------+--------------+-----------+---------------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| name           | list         | tags      | desc          | due | activity   | id                       | url                           |
+----------------+--------------+-----------+---------------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Clean bathroom | Weekly Tasks | Household |               |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de5b92a1708bd7c8c93 | https://trello.com/c/ds3tuegh |
| Do dishes      | To Do        | Household | Hello README! |     | 2020-09-20 | 5f679de3b9c40b795bd6e08b | https://trello.com/c/8qBVAraN |
|                |              |           |               |     |            |                          |                               |
+----------------+--------------+-----------+---------------+-----+------------+--------------------------+-------------------------------+
$ gtd show cards --by name --fields name,list,tags,desc
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+
| name                    | list         | tags        | desc          |
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+
| Clean bathroom          | Weekly Tasks | Household   |               |
| Do dishes               | To Do        | Household   | Hello README! |
|                         |              |             |               |
| Eat a sandwich          | Doing        | Food        |               |
| Purchase a pomelo       | To Do        | Food        |               |
| This was written in vim | Done         | Programming |               |
| Write some python       | To Do        | Programming |               |
+-------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------------+

You can also filter the fields that are shown with the --fields argument. By default, gtd.py will trim down the fields until it fits your current terminal width. It'll only wrap if you have really long card titles relative to the width of your terminal.

The JSON and TSV output formats are handy for programmatically retrieving information from your Trello account. For example, here are two methods to find the shortlink for every card on a list:

$ gtd show cards --by list --fields list,url --tsv | awk '/^Doing/{print $NF}'
https://trello.com/c/o5Oph6AD
$ LIST_ID=$(gtd show lists --json | jq -r '.[]|select(.name == "Doing")|.id')
$ gtd show cards --json | jq ".[]|select(.idList == \"$LIST_ID\")|.shortUrl"
"https://trello.com/c/o5Oph6AD"

Setup

$ pip3 install -U gtd.py
$ gtd onboard

The onboard command will assist you through the process of getting a Trello API key for use with this program and putting it in the correct file. This will happen automatically if you run a command that requires authentication without having your API keys set.

If you'd like to enable automatic bash completion for gtd.py, add the following line to your ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(_GTD_COMPLETE=source gtd)"

This relies on click's internal bash completion engine, so it does not work on other shells like sh, csh, or zsh.

Configuration

The onboard command will help you create the configuration file interactively. If you prefer to do the process manually, Trello has a button on their website for temporarily creating an OAUTH key/token. Your API key and secret should be placed in a YAML file with the OAUTH key & token, like this example.

api_key: "your-api-key"
api_secret: "your-api-secret"
oauth_token: "your-oauth-token"
oauth_token_secret: "your-oauth-secret"

All four of these properties are required, gtd will fail to run without them. There are other optional settings you can define inside your yaml configuration file:

board: "Case-sensitive name of Trello board to use without --board argument"
inbox_list: "Name of the default list for new cards"
color: True
banner: False
prompt_for_untagged_cards: True
prompt_for_open_attachments: False

Here are all valid configuration properties with explanations of their behavior:

This configuration file can be put in a variety of locations within your home folder. The onboard command will help you with platform detection, putting the configuration file where appropriate given your operating system. When running, gtd` will check all possible locations out of this list:

• ~/.gtd.yaml
• ~/.config/gtd/gtd.yaml
• ~/Library/Application Support/gtd/gtd.yaml
• ~/.local/etc/gtd.yaml
• ~/.local/etc/gtd/gtd.yaml

Contributing

Contributions would be great! If you think something could be improved just go change it and ask!

There are some tests for the command-line interface to make sure everything works properly. There are currently a few subcommands fully covered with more planned. To run these tests, first use the "onboard" command to create a configuration file. Then add a property test_board to the configuration file, with the name of a board you can dedicate to running these tests. If the board does not yet exist it will be created during the test run. The tests will destroy an existing board. Then, run:

make test
# OR,
python -m pytest tests/

I use black to format the source code but keep some of my conventions kept in this source since the beginning. I've been using single-quotes for strings and wrapping at 120 character line length, so I use the following command to do the formatting. Please apply it when giving patches.

make black
# OR,
black -l 120 -S gtd.py todo/ tests/

Notes

• The code is lightly tested. Please (please!) report bugs if you find them.
• This has only been used on Linux and Mac OSX
• Windows is not supported.
• Some naming conventions differ from Trello, most notably "label" is called "tag"

License

BSD. There is a copy included with the software as LICENSE

Copyright 2020 Jamie Luck (delucks)