caleb

Named for the character Caleb Smith, played by Domhnall Gleeson, in Ex Machina — A film by Alex Garland.

Header image: Ex Machina (2014), dir. Alex Garland — stills by Colin Field / Aimee Spinks. © Universal Pictures International / A24. Not covered by this project's license.

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caleb is a TUI task manager for coding sessions. One file per session, stored as plain GitHub-flavored markdown so it's useful in any editor or renderer. Linux, terminal, mouse-aware.

Tasks sit in two panes side by side — Active and Completed — and checking one off moves it across.

Why on earth another to-do list?

Of all things, right?

Because it is a fun, personal Rust based project and it is useful to me. Maybe other people might find it useful and I offer it here in that spirit. That, plus I love a certain cool movie and I wanted a piece of software named after a character in it. This fit the bill 🔥

Using this thing is fun and helpful for me, no doubt 💯

Install

Requires Rust 1.90 or newer (edition 2024).

git clone git@github.com:papadavis47/caleb.git
cd caleb
cargo install --path .

Use

caleb              # start a new session, named for the current time
caleb -r           # resume a past session (interactive picker)
caleb --list       # print all sessions to stdout
caleb --clean      # delete sessions with no open tasks (asks first)
caleb --help
caleb -v           # version

Sessions live in $XDG_DATA_HOME/caleb (default ~/.local/share/caleb/), named YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM.md.

Resuming a past session renames the file to the current timestamp — the old name goes away. Contents travel with the rename.

A preview pane beside the list shows the highlighted session's file as you move through it, so you can see what a session holds without opening it — which matters, since opening one renames it. It needs 80 columns; below that the list runs full width. p toggles it, Ctrl-d/Ctrl-u scroll it.

The picker hides sessions with no unfinished tasks; press a to show all. Press d to delete the highlighted session — it asks y/n first, and the file is removed from disk for good.

Press p in a session to pull unfinished work forward. Choose a past session, then tick which of its open tasks you want; they arrive in your Active pane and are checked off in the session they came from. Drain a session completely and it drops to zero open tasks, so caleb --clean can then sweep it. A pull writes both files itself — the current session first, then the one the tasks came from — so nothing is left unsaved.

caleb --clean clears those finished sessions off disk. It lists every session with no open tasks — including ones that never got a task — and deletes them only after you answer y. It must be used on its own; pairing it with another flag is a usage error.

--clean and the picker's d are the only two things in caleb that delete a file, and both ask first.

Keys

Press ? inside the app for the same reference on screen.

In a session

Key	Action
j k / ↓ ↑	Move the cursor within the focused pane
h / ←	Focus the Active pane
l / →	Focus the Completed pane
g / G	Jump to the top / bottom of the pane
a	Add a task — opens the input field at the bottom
d	Delete the selected task
space / x	Toggle done, moving the task to the other pane
J / K	Move the selected task down / up
p	Pull open tasks from a past session — writes both files
s	Save
q	Quit — saves first if there are unsaved changes
?	Help overlay; any key dismisses it

While the add-task field is open: type the task, Backspace deletes a character, Enter commits it to Active, Esc cancels and discards. Tasks are capped at 150 bytes; the view scrolls so the caret stays visible.

Mouse

Action	Effect
Wheel	Scroll the focused pane — the cursor stays where it is
Click	Select a task and focus its pane
Double-click	Toggle that task done

Capturing the mouse disables the terminal's own click-drag selection inside the app; hold Shift while dragging to get it back.

Resume picker — caleb -r

Key	Action
j k / ↓ ↑	Move between sessions
Enter	Open the selected session (renames it to now)
d	Delete it — asks y/n first
p	Show / hide the preview pane
Ctrl-d / Ctrl-u	Scroll the preview half a page
a	Show all sessions, not just ones with open tasks
Esc / q	Quit without opening anything

Click a row to select it, double-click to open it.

Pull — p in a session

Two steps. First choose a session:

Key	Action
j k / ↓ ↑	Move between sessions
Enter	Choose this one and go to its tasks
Esc / q	Cancel

Then choose which of its open tasks come across — all start ticked:

Key	Action
j k / ↓ ↑	Move between tasks
space	Tick / untick the task under the cursor
a	Tick all / none
Enter	Pull the ticked tasks
Esc	Back to the session list
q	Cancel the whole thing

File format

# Session 2026-05-31 14:30

## Active

- [ ] refactor search component
- [ ] implement structs for scaffold.rs
- [ ] use delta to begin new project idea
- [ ] write up new PR for some recent commits to fork

## Completed

- [x] write README

GitHub-flavored task lists. Edit the file in any editor; caleb parses - [ ] / - [x] lines and ignores everything else. Tasks are capped at 150 bytes of UTF-8 text, truncated on a character boundary so multi-byte text never splits.

Environment

• $XDG_DATA_HOME — override the storage directory.
• $NO_COLOR — disables all color output (no-color.org). Bold, dim, reverse, and strike-through are kept, so the cursor stays visible without color.

The chrome uses four 256-color slots: blue 33 for the focused pane border and the add-task field, dim gray 245 for unfocused panes, orchid 177 for the help overlay, and gold 221 for the unsaved marker.

Platform

Linux only. macOS/BSD might work but aren't tested.

License

MIT.