Mach

A terminal-first task manager for people who live in the shell and work with agents.

Categories, reusable labels, due dates, subtasks, inline images, and a CLI that scripts or agents can drive.

Install

# 1. checksum-verified release archive → ~/.local/bin
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Q1CHENL/mach/main/install.sh | sh

# 2. crates.io → ~/.cargo/bin  (Rust 1.90+)
cargo install --locked mach-tui

# 3. local clone
git clone https://github.com/Q1CHENL/mach.git && cd mach && cargo install --locked --path .

Crate name mach-tui, binary mach.

CLI

mach with no args opens the TUI. Subcommands cover add / list / edit / done / delete / categories / labels / subtasks and more, with flags for due dates, importance, categories, labels, description markup, and --json for scripts.

mach --help

Agents work well against the same CLI — stable flags, unique ID prefixes, and JSON output when you need it.

Use mach list --query TEXT to search task titles, descriptions, and assigned label names alongside the existing category, label, and open/done filters. Automation can establish shared names idempotently with mach categories ensure NAME and mach labels ensure NAME; explicitly supplied descriptions or colors must match an existing record or the command reports a conflict.

Export the task store to a portable archive and restore it into another data directory:

mach export tasks.mach
mach --dir ~/restored-mach import tasks.mach

The TUI provides /export and /import <FILE> for the same workflow. Release binary installations can update with /update or mach update --install; Cargo installations update with cargo install --locked mach-tui.

Data

Lives in ~/.mach: tasks, categories, labels and settings in SQLite (mach.db), with managed images under images/. The CLI and TUI safely share the same store, and changes appear in the running app.

Portable .mach archives contain versioned JSON data plus the exact managed image bytes referenced by those tasks. Back up the whole data directory while Mach is closed when you need a complete local backup.

Another folder: --dir PATH or MACH_DIR.

License

MIT