Flowtime

Flowtime

Flowtime is a task management plugin for Obsidian that puts your tasks in tables — editable, filterable, time-tracked tables. Tag tasks with dates, durations, buckets, projects, and priorities in plain markdown, then view them through one of eight code block renderers. No queries to write, no external dependencies.

The workflow: capture freely into your inbox, tag with @today or @b:deep-work as you go, then plan your day from the flowtime-today table. Reschedule overdue items, track time with countdown timers, and review your week with the weekplan grid. Every edit writes back to your markdown files — your data stays yours.

---

What it does

Eight code block types show your tasks in different ways:

Task entry

Quick entry (Cmd+Shift+I) — opens a modal. Type task text, set a date, duration, bucket, and project. Preview the final line before saving.

Date shortcuts: @today, @tomorrow, @monday–@sunday, @next-week, @next-monday, or any YYYY-MM-DD.

Durations: 10m, 30m, 1h, 1.5h — typed inline or picked from the modal.

@-completions — type @ in any note for inline task macros and directives:

• @td → new today task, @tm → tomorrow, @now → 15m today
• @today, @overdue, @weekly → insert code blocks
• @b:deep-work, @p:Website, @30m, @high → tag the task

Inbox capture — Inbox.md lives at vault root. Dump raw thoughts there, one per line. No syntax required. Process them through the Process Inbox command — a modal walks each line and lets you promote it to a task, project, wiki entry, or snooze it.

Also: @inbox anywhere on a line (captures preceding text to inbox) and @p:ProjectName (captures to that project's Tasks.md).

Extract to new note

Extract to new note (Ctrl+G / Cmd+G) — select one or more lines in a note, press the shortcut, and Flowtime creates a new note in the same folder from your selection. The first selected line becomes the title, stripped of list markers, headings, and @-directives. All remaining selected lines move to the new note, and the first line is replaced with a [[wikilink]] pointing to it. The new note opens in a new tab.

If a file with that title already exists, Flowtime appends 2, 3, etc. to avoid overwrites.

Undo extract — run from the command palette to delete the last extracted file. Also attempts editor.undo() to revert the source text. Use this within 30 seconds of the extraction.

Examples:

# Before selection (3 lines)
## Active Sprint
- [ ] Fix login bug @today @1h @b:deep-work
- [ ] Review PR @tomorrow

# After Ctrl+G
[[Active Sprint]]

# New note Active Sprint.md
## Active Sprint
- [ ] Fix login bug @today @1h @b:deep-work
- [ ] Review PR @tomorrow

With a task as the first line, @-directives are stripped from the filename and link:

# Before
- [ ] Review PR @today @1h @b:deep-work
- [ ] Merge branch

# After
[[Review PR]]

# New note Review PR.md
- [ ] Review PR @today @1h @b:deep-work
- [ ] Merge branch

Tables

Every code block renders as an interactive table with inline editing.

Time inputs — each task row has editable start time and duration fields. Type 7:30, 45m, 1.5h — the end time auto-calculates below. Changes save to the source file after 300ms.

Countdown timers — tasks with a duration get a play button. Click to start a countdown. It pauses, resets, plays a sound when done. The progress bar fills from left to right — amber at 80%, red at done. Running a row timer also starts the status bar timer.

Status bar timer — shows the active task and remaining time. Left-click to pause/resume, right-click to stop and record the session.

Checkboxes — click to toggle [x] in the source file. Uses Obsidian's native checkbox styling.

Date popup — click the date badge on any row. Pick a date, jump to today/tomorrow/next-week, or click ✕ to backlog it.

Task detail popup — click any task text. Edit the date and bucket, open the source file or project note.

Column visibility — the ☰ Columns button in any table toolbar lets you toggle individual columns. Defaults shown below:

Bulk operations — compact modes have buttons to assign all visible tasks to today, or backlog them all (overdue mode).

Filter, sort, group — each table has a toolbar:

• Filter by bucket, project, date, text, duration, status, or priority. Operators: is, is not, contains, >, <, exists.
• Sort by clicking column headers. Shift-click for multi-column.
• Group by bucket, project, date, or status — with nested sub-headers.

Cross-table refresh

Change a task's date or time in one table and all other tables on the same page update automatically. No manual reload.

Project detection

A task belongs to a project if:

• It lives in a folder with a folder note that has type: project frontmatter
• The folder itself is named after a project
• The task text contains @p:ProjectName
• It has a #project/Name tag (legacy)

Tasks that don't match any project show under "Other".

Time budgets (buckets)

Organize tasks into categories with weekly hour limits. Built-in buckets: Deep Work, Admin, Meetings (add your own in settings). Tag a task with @b:deep-work or @bucket:deep-work.

The flowtime-buckets view shows progress bars per bucket — normal (accent), warning (amber >80%), over (red >100%). There's also a configurable daily cap with a progress bar in the today view.

Session history

Every time the status bar timer stops (or a row timer finishes), a session is recorded. The flowtime-sessions view shows a filterable history table with daily totals and per-bucket breakdown. Sessions live in .obsidian/plugins/flowtime/sessions/ — hidden from the file explorer but synced.

Recurrence & routines

Mark tasks with 🔁 to make them repeat:

Put these lines in .md files inside Routines/ (configurable). The plugin reads the folder, figures out what's due, and writes real task instances into your daily notes. Generation history is tracked in the plugin folder to prevent dupes across synced devices.

Delete an instance and it stays gone — the engine won't recreate it. Vacation mode (toggle in settings or the weekplan toolbar) pauses all generation.

On plugin load, the engine generates instances for today and the rest of the week. It also watches the routines folder for changes.

To support long-running Obsidian sessions, the engine re-generates automatically at 6 AM and 6 PM each day. This ensures new routine tasks appear without needing a restart, even if Obsidian stays open for days or weeks at a time.

Weekplan view

```flowtime-weekplan
```

Shows Monday–Friday with all your week's tasks. Two view modes you can toggle:

List view — day-by-day sections. Each day shows scheduled hours vs. daily cap as a progress bar. Inline editing for time, duration, checkbox, delete. Routines get a 🔁 badge.

Grid view — horizontal timeline grid:

Tasks sit in their time range (30min slot rows). The current day and time slot are highlighted. Click a card to edit time, duration, checkbox, or delete. Untimed tasks live at the bottom of each day column.

Templates

Four commands:

• Insert daily dashboard — drops flowtime-today + flowtime-overdue blocks at cursor
• Insert weekly dashboard — drops flowtime-weekly + flowtime-dueweek blocks
• Insert weekplan — drops ```flowtime-weekplan ``` block at cursor
• Create Daily/Weekly Dashboard — creates the actual Dashboard.md files at vault root

Content width

Settings → Display has a slider for reading view max width. Default 0 uses Obsidian's ~700px. Slide it to 1920px to give tables more room. Applies live.

Task format

Flowtime parses task lines from any markdown file in your vault:

Complete example:

- [ ] 09:00—11:30 Code review @2026-06-24 🔼 @1.5h @b:deep-work

Setup

New project — run the command, enter a name. Creates a folder with a project note, optionally Tasks.md and Wiki.md.

Daily dashboard — add to your daily note template:

## 🔄 Carry Over
```flowtime-overdue
```

## 🎯 Today
```flowtime-today
```

## ⚠️ Due This Week
```flowtime-dueweek
```

Weekly dashboard:

## 📊 This Week
```flowtime-weekly
```

## ⚠️ Due Next Week
```flowtime-dueweek
```

Budget overview:

## 📊 Weekly Budget
```flowtime-buckets
```

Settings

In Settings → Flowtime.

Requirements

Obsidian v1.8.7+

Privacy

Flowtime scans your vault's markdown files to find task annotations, time blocks, project frontmatter, and tags. This scanning is entirely local — no data leaves your vault, and there are no network requests, telemetry, or analytics. The plugin works fully offline.

What the plugin accesses:

• File paths — reads file names and paths to discover task-carrying notes
• File content — reads markdown files to parse inline task syntax
• Metadata cache — uses Obsidian's built-in cache for frontmatter lookups (avoids raw file reads where possible)

Flowtime does not collect, transmit, or store any of your data outside your Obsidian vault.

Development

npm run build
cp dist/main.js manifest.json styles.css /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/flowtime/
npm run release
cp -r dist/ /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/flowtime/
# Reload Obsidian