Tasku
A to-do list you manage entirely from the terminal — with color-coded priorities and projects — for people who don't want to open a separate app to track tasks.
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Description
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.
💬 Our review
The short version: if you're a developer who resents alt-tabbing to a task app, Tasku's color-coded, terminal-native interface plus local SQLite storage is a genuinely nice fit for a keyboard-driven workflow, and the raw SQL access is a real power-user feature most task apps would never expose.
Compared to Taskwarrior (the long-established CLI task manager), Tasku trades some of Taskwarrior's deep filtering and scripting maturity for a more visually polished, color-forward interface out of the box — Taskwarrior is the more battle-tested choice if you need advanced recurring tasks or complex filter queries, while Tasku is more approachable if you mainly want a clean, colorful list with projects and priorities. Compared to GUI tools like Todoist or Things, Tasku obviously has no mobile app, no reminders, and no cross-device sync — everything lives in a local SQLite file on one machine — which is exactly the tradeoff terminal-first users are making on purpose: privacy and offline-first over convenience features. It's a very young project (1 GitHub star), so expect a smaller, less battle-tested tool than Taskwarrior, but it's free and the local-only SQLite design means there's no lock-in risk if you decide to move on.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Gratuit, distribué en RubyGem
Pros
Interface colorée directement dans le terminal
Cinq niveaux de priorité, six statuts de tâche
Stockage local SQLite, fonctionne hors ligne, données privées
Accès SQL brut pour requêtes personnalisées
Gratuit et open source
Cons
Pas d'application mobile ni de synchronisation multi-appareils
Pas de rappels/notifications
Projet très jeune (1 étoile GitHub), moins éprouvé que Taskwarrior