Alfred 2 workflows - managing a to-do list

January 26, 2013

Rain here at high altitude since Friday, which is very unusual for wintertime. The landscape has melted and we can see our sodden backyard once again.

Cooped up, I turned to extra cups of coffee and playing with Alfred 2 workflows.

A few years ago I worked up a system using Alfred 1 to add items to a task list that gets displayed on my desktop with Geektool. The list itself is a Taskpaper compatible text file, and I use a TextMate bundle that I put together (derived from the Tasks bundle along with it.

With Alfred 2 it was fun to recreate and add to the functionality of my old script using workflows. I invoke the workflow with “do something” to add something to the top of my task list; later, “done something” will mark that item as completed and add a timestamp: Alfred uses the query you specify to find matching entries in the todo file, and acts on the one you select from that list of matches.

Here’s a quick tour. Adding an item via Alfred 2 and viewing the new entry in TextMate:

Then using Alfred 2 to find the same item and mark it as completed. You get a confirmation via growl and can see the updated item in TextMate:

I have some ideas to clean up and improve this workflow but do plan to release it. If you’re interested in seeing it now in all its ugly works-for-me state, just let me know.

So far it’s been lots of fun to work with the Alfred 2. If you’re an Alfred user considering the upgrade, I recommend checking it out!

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