ToDoist

Disclaimer: This is an independent, open-source personal project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the commercial application "Todoist" (by Doist Inc).

A terminal-based task manager written in C, featuring a multi-panel interactive TUI, SQLite persistence, and full CRUD support for tasks and tags.

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About

ToDoist is a lightweight, keyboard-driven task manager that lives entirely in your terminal. There is no web server, no Electron wrapper, and no runtime dependency beyond a few system libraries. Tasks are stored locally in an SQLite database and the interface is rendered using the ncurses library stack (menu, form, panel).

The project was built as a deep dive into systems-level C programming — manual memory management, terminal UI rendering, relational data modelling, and a Makefile-based build system with full support for debug, sanitizer, and profiling workflows.

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Features

• Three-panel layout — Filters sidebar, Tags sidebar, and Task list with a live Details panel
• Task management — Create, edit, delete, and toggle status (pending / completed)
• Tag system — Assign tags to tasks, filter by tag, add and delete tags on the fly
• Smart filters — All, Today, Tomorrow, Overdue, and Completed views backed by SQLite date queries
• In-place forms — Add and edit tasks with a multi-field ncurses form including due date validation
• Live detail view — Selected task details (title, description, status, due date, created date) update in real time as you navigate
• Responsive layout — Detail panel hides on narrow terminals; modal fallback for narrow screens
• Real-time clock — Top bar shows current date and time, updated on every key event
• Terminal resize handling — Gracefully redraws the full layout on KEY_RESIZE
• UUID primary keys — Tasks and tags are identified by RFC 4122 UUIDs (via libuuid)
• Soft deletes — Deleted records are flagged is_deleted = 1, never hard-dropped

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Interface

The interface is divided into three focusable panels: a Filters sidebar (All, Today, Tomorrow, Over-Due, Completed), a Tags sidebar for category-based filtering, a Tasks list showing status checkboxes, and a Details panel that updates live as you navigate.

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Keybindings

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Navigate current panel
Tab	Cycle focus between panels
Enter	Select filter / tag / confirm action
a / A	Add new task (in Tasks panel) or new tag (in Tags panel)
e / E	Edit selected task
c / C	Toggle task status (pending ↔ completed)
d / D	Delete selected task (in Tasks panel) or tag (in Tags panel)
h / H	Show help overlay
q / Q	Quit

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Project Structure

ToDoist/
├── src/
│   ├── main.c          # Entry point — opens DB, initialises TUI
│   ├── database.c      # SQLite layer — schema init, CRUD, queries
│   ├── tui.c           # ncurses TUI — layout, event loop, forms, menus
│   └── utils.c         # Helpers — field buffer trimming, date validation
├── include/
│   ├── database.h      # Task / Tag / MenuData structs, DB function prototypes
│   ├── tui.h           # AppState / FocusableMenu structs, TUI prototypes
│   └── utils.h         # Utility function prototypes
├── data/
│   └── fill.sql        # Seed script — creates schema and inserts mock data
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── ci.yml      # GitHub Actions CI — builds on ubuntu-latest
└── Makefile            # Build system — release, debug, asan, valgrind targets

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config uuid-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S base-devel sqlite ncurses util-linux-libs

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install sqlite ncurses

On macOS, uuid is part of the system SDK — no extra install needed.

Build and Run

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/abdellah-darni/ToDoist.git
cd ToDoist

# Build (release)
make

# Seed the database with sample data
make init_db

# Run
make run

Build Targets

Target	Description
make	Release build (-O2)
make debug	Debug build (-g -O0 -DDEBUG)
make release	Explicit release build
make run	Build and run
make asan	Build with AddressSanitizer
make run-asan	Run ASAN build, log errors to logs/asan.log
make valgrind	Run under Valgrind, log to logs/valgrind.log
make gdb	Launch in GDB (interactive)
make gdb-report	Generate GDB crash report to logs/gdb-report.log
make init_db	Initialise / reset the database from data/fill.sql
make clean	Remove build artefacts and logs
make clean-all	Remove build artefacts, logs, and database

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Database Schema

Three tables with soft-delete support across all of them.

tasks       (id TEXT PK, title, description, status, due_date, created_at, updated_at, is_deleted)
tags        (id TEXT PK, name UNIQUE, is_deleted)
task_tags   (task_id FK, tag_id FK, updated_at, is_deleted)  -- many-to-many

All IDs are RFC 4122 UUIDs. Timestamps are stored as Unix epoch integers. Tasks and tags are never hard-deleted — they are flagged with is_deleted = 1 so that all read queries filter them out without losing history.

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Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Language	C (C11 standard)
UI	ncurses, menu, form, panel
Database	SQLite 3 (via libsqlite3)
UUID generation	libuuid
Build system	GNU Make
CI	GitHub Actions (ubuntu-latest)