Quick Start

This guide gets you from zero to managing tasks in under a minute.

Initialize a workspace

Navigate to your project directory and initialize Tack:

cd my-project
tack init

This creates a .tack/ directory with the default configuration.

Create a project

Projects group related tasks and give them a prefix:

tack project create backend

This creates a project named "backend" with the prefix BACK. All tasks in this project will be numbered like BACK-1, BACK-2, etc.

Create tasks

Now create some tasks:

tack new "Set up database migrations" --priority=high
tack new "Implement user authentication" --priority=critical
tack new "Write API documentation" --priority=low

List tasks

See all your tasks:

tack ls

Filter by status or priority:

tack ls --status=todo --priority=high

Work on a task

Start working on a task:

tack task move BACK-1 in_progress

Complete a task

Mark it done:

tack done BACK-1

The Kanban board

For a visual overview, launch the interactive board:

tack board

Use arrow keys (or hjkl) to navigate, < and > to move tasks between columns, and q to quit.

What's in .tack/?

Your tasks are stored as markdown files:

.tack/
├── config.toml           # Configuration
└── projects/
    └── backend/
        ├── project.yaml  # Project metadata
        ├── BACK-1.md     # Task files
        ├── BACK-2.md
        └── BACK-3.md

You can edit these files directly with any text editor — they're just markdown with YAML frontmatter.

Next steps

• CLI Reference — Full command documentation