Todo & Task Tracking

Your agent works best when it has a structured way to track work. A task tracker lets the agent discover work, track dependencies, and maintain a backlog — not just respond to messages.

Why task tracking?

Without a task tracker, your agent only reacts. With one, it can:

Discover work → create tasks as it finds things to do
Track dependencies → know what blocks what
Pick next work → td ready shows unblocked tasks
Close when done → maintain a clean backlog
Remember across sessions → tasks persist in storage

td — recommended

td is a CLI task tracker built for AI agents. SQLite-backed, Linear-style workflow states, dependency tracking. Pre-installed in TinyFat containers.

Quick start

Initialize in your project
Terminal window
```
td init
```
Create a task
Terminal window
```
td create "Add user authentication"
```
List tasks
Terminal window
```
td list
```
See ready work
Terminal window
```
td ready
```
Shows unblocked tasks — perfect for picking what to do next.

Core commands

# Create tasks
td create "Fix login bug"
td create "Critical fix" -p 0              # Priority (0=highest)
td create "Add OAuth" -t feature           # Type
td create "Refactor auth" -d "Details..."  # With description

# List and filter
td list                    # All tasks
td list -s started         # By status
td ready                   # Unblocked tasks

# Update and close
td move TASK-1 started     # Change status
td close TASK-1 "Done"     # Close with reason
td cancel TASK-2           # Cancel

# Subtasks and dependencies
td sub TASK-1 "Subtask"    # Create subtask
td dep add TASK-2 TASK-1   # TASK-1 blocks TASK-2
td dep tree TASK-1         # Show dependency tree

# Comments
td comment TASK-1 "Found edge case in X"

Workflow states

td uses Linear-style states:

State	Meaning
`backlog`	Not started, low priority
`todo`	Ready to work on
`started`	In progress
`done`	Completed
`canceled`	Won’t do

Agent workflow

Check ready work
Terminal window
```
td ready
```
Claim a task
Terminal window
```
td move TASK-1 started
```
Do the work
Close when done
Terminal window
```
td close TASK-1 "Implemented"
```

Create discovered work

td create "Found: need to handle edge case X" -t bug

Command reference

Command	Description
`td init`	Initialize project
`td create`	Create task
`td sub`	Create subtask
`td list`	List tasks
`td ready`	Unblocked tasks
`td show`	Task details
`td move`	Change status
`td close`	Complete task
`td cancel`	Cancel task
`td dep add`	Add dependency
`td dep tree`	Dependency tree
`td comment`	Add comment
`td search`	Search tasks
`td stats`	Statistics

Use td --help or td <command> --help for full options.

Alternatives

Beads

Beads (bd) is a Git-native todo system. Issues live in your repo as JSONL and sync with Git. Good if you want issue tracking committed alongside your code.

bd init
bd create "Fix bug"
bd ready

Next steps

Memory Bank Pattern — Project context structure
Agent Workspace — Your agent’s filesystem