Best alternatives to Tasku in 2026

Switching out of the terminal to check a task list in a separate app breaks flow for developers who live on the command line. Tasku is a task manager built specifically for that workflow: create, organize, and track tasks without ever leaving the shell, with visual polish (color-coded priorities and projects) that most CLI task tools skip in favor of plain text. It supports five priority levels (none, low, medium, high, urgent) and six status states (backlog, todo, in_progress, done, cancelled, archived), with tasks displayed using color bars representing project, priority, and status at a glance. Projects get customizable hex color assignments, and the tool includes due date tracking with overdue filtering, a statistics and analytics dashboard, and raw SQL query access for power users who want to interrogate their task data directly. It's written in Ruby (3.1.0+ required) and distributed as a RubyGem, storing everything locally in a SQLite database at ~/.tasku/ — so it works fully offline and keeps task data private to your machine, with configurable display preferences like spacing and color-bar segments.