Core Concepts

doing stores everything in a single plain text file using the TaskPaper format. This page explains how that file is structured and the key ideas behind it.

The Doing File

By default, doing reads and writes a file at ~/.doing or ~/Library/Application\ Support/doing/what_was_i_doing.md on macOS. You can change this in your configuration or pass --doing-file to any command.

The file is plain text in TaskPaper format, which means it is human-readable, easy to grep, and works well with version control.

Sections

The doing file is organized into sections. Each section is a top-level heading followed by a colon. Two sections are used by default:

• Currently -- entries you are actively working on.
• Archive -- entries that have been finished.

You can create custom sections to organize your work however you like.

Entries

An entry is a single line inside a section. It consists of a title and a timestamp:

- Writing API integration tests @started(2026-03-30 14:05)

Entries always start with a dash (-). The @started tag records when the entry was created.

Tags

Tags are words prefixed with @. They can appear anywhere in the entry title. Some tags carry a value in parentheses:

- Deploy staging server @deploy @done(2026-03-30 15:30)

Common built-in tags:

Tag	Purpose
@started(timestamp)	When the entry was created
@done(timestamp)	When the entry was finished

You can use any custom tags you want -- @meeting, @bugfix, @project(website), and so on. Tags are useful for filtering entries with commands like doing show and doing tag.

Notes

Entries can have multi-line notes attached to them. Notes are indented lines that follow an entry:

- Investigating memory leak in worker pool @started(2026-03-30 10:00)
    Heap profile shows growth in the connection cache.
    Suspect the idle timeout is not firing.

You can add notes when creating an entry with the --note or -n flag, or edit them later with doing note.

What the File Looks Like

Here is an example of a doing file on disk:

Currently:
- Refactoring error handling in CLI commands @started(2026-03-30 14:30)
    Switching from anyhow to thiserror for typed errors.
- Writing unit tests for tag parser @started(2026-03-30 13:00)

Archive:
- Set up CI pipeline for release builds @done(2026-03-30 12:00) @project(infra)
- Fix off-by-one in date range query @done(2026-03-29 17:00) @bugfix

Templates

Templates control how entries are displayed in output. They use a placeholder syntax to format fields like the title, date, tags, and notes. You can inspect or edit the default template with:

doing template

Different commands and output formats can use different templates, letting you control exactly what information appears and how it is formatted.

Views

Views are named, reusable queries saved in your configuration. A view defines which section to pull from, how many entries to show, which tags to filter by, the sort order, and which template to use for output.

List available views:

doing views

Display a view:

doing view my_view

Views are a convenient way to avoid retyping the same flags for queries you run often.