Outline

Outline

A productivity toolkit for capturing, planning, tracking, and reviewing tasks and ideas. Each command category maintains its own timestamped log file, so you can organize entries by purpose — plans, reviews, reminders, tags, timelines, and more. Includes built-in statistics, multi-format export, full-text search, and weekly review support.

All operations are logged with timestamps and stored locally in flat files for easy inspection and portability.

Commands

How Entry Commands Work

Every entry command (add, plan, track, review, streak, remind, prioritize, archive, tag, timeline, report, weekly-review) follows the same pattern:

• With arguments: Appends a timestamped entry (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<text>) to the corresponding .log file and shows the new total count
• Without arguments: Shows the 20 most recent entries from that category's log file

Data Storage

All data is stored in ~/.local/share/outline/ by default.

Files created in the data directory:

• add.log, plan.log, track.log, etc. — One log file per command category, each containing timestamped entries in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<text> format
• history.log — Audit trail of every command executed with timestamps
• export.json / export.csv / export.txt — Generated by the export command

Export Formats

• json — Array of objects with type, time, and value fields
• csv — Header row (type,time,value) followed by data rows
• txt — Human-readable sections grouped by category

Requirements

• bash 4.0 or later (uses set -euo pipefail, local variables)
• grep — used by the search command for case-insensitive matching
• Standard POSIX utilities — date, cat, echo, mkdir, wc, du, head, tail, basename
• No external API keys or network access required
• No Python or Node.js dependencies

When to Use

1. Daily task capture — Quickly jot down tasks, ideas, or observations throughout the day using add or plan, then review with recent
2. Habit tracking and streaks — Use streak to check in on daily habits and stats to see your consistency over time
3. Weekly reviews and retrospectives — Use weekly-review to log reflections at the end of each week, then search to find patterns
4. Project timeline management — Use timeline to record milestones and report to log progress summaries for stakeholders
5. Exporting data for analysis — Use export json to pipe structured data into jq, dashboards, or spreadsheets for deeper analysis

Examples

# Add a task and a plan
outline add "Set up CI pipeline for new repo"
#=> [Outline] add: Set up CI pipeline for new repo
#=> Saved. Total add entries: 1

outline plan "Q2 roadmap: launch v2.0 by June"
#=> [Outline] plan: Q2 roadmap: launch v2.0 by June
#=> Saved. Total plan entries: 1

# Track progress and tag it
outline track "CI pipeline: tests passing, deploy step WIP"
outline tag "ci-pipeline: infrastructure"

# Set a reminder
outline remind "Team standup at 10am tomorrow"
#=> [Outline] remind: Team standup at 10am tomorrow
#=> Saved. Total remind entries: 1

# View statistics across all categories
outline stats
#=> === Outline Stats ===
#=>   add: 1 entries
#=>   plan: 1 entries
#=>   ...
#=>   Total: 5 entries
#=>   Data size: 4.0K

# Export everything as JSON
outline export json
#=> Exported to /home/user/.local/share/outline/export.json (245 bytes)

# Search across all logs
outline search "pipeline"
#=> Searching for: pipeline
#=>   --- add ---
#=>     2025-03-18 14:30|Set up CI pipeline for new repo

Configuration

The data directory is hardcoded to ~/.local/share/outline/. To use a custom location, modify the DATA_DIR variable in the script.

How It Works

1. On every invocation, the tool ensures the data directory exists (mkdir -p)
2. The first argument selects the command via a case dispatch
3. Entry commands append a pipe-delimited line (timestamp|text) to their category-specific log file
4. Every command also appends to history.log for auditing
5. stats iterates over all .log files to produce aggregate counts
6. export reads all .log files and writes a combined output in the chosen format
7. All output goes to stdout for easy piping and redirection

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