A fast, keyboard-driven terminal UI for todo.txt. Vim-style bindings, atomic writes, instant external-edit detection, and four hand-tuned themes — all in a single static binary.

Highlights

• Pure todo.txt. Reads and writes the standard format — every line is plain text you can edit with anything else.
• Vim keys, no surprises. j / k to move, dd to delete, gg / G to jump, u to undo (50 levels), chord prompts (gg, dd, fp, fc) with a 600 ms window.
• Atomic, sync-friendly writes. Every change goes through write-temp-then-rename. If another process — Dropbox, an editor, a script — modifies the file, tuxedo reloads on the next keypress (or within ~250 ms while idle) and flashes a notice.
• Built-in agenda. t opens a focused view that groups overdue, due-today, and upcoming tasks.
• Sibling-file archive. A moves completed tasks to done.txt next to your file, atomically.
• Filter, sort, multi-select. Cycle by +project or @context, sort by priority / due / file order, and bulk-complete or bulk-delete in visual mode.
• Four themes, three densities. Cycle with T and D. Choices persist across runs.
• No daemon, no database, no cloud. One file in, one file out.

Screens

Empty state • cell-bowtie mark and quick-start when the file has no tasks
Today / agenda • overdue, due-today, and upcoming groups
Archive • completed tasks grouped by completion date
Filter sidebar active • fp cycles projects with j/k, fc cycles contexts
Help • ? opens the full keybindings overlay

cargo run --example screenshots

Themes

T cycles through four built-in themes.

Muted Slate (default)	Dawn
Nord	Matrix

Install

Homebrew (macOS, Linux)

brew install webstonehq/tap/tuxedo

Prebuilt binaries

Download the archive for your platform from the latest release and put tuxedo on your PATH.

Targets: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu, x86_64-apple-darwin, aarch64-apple-darwin, x86_64-pc-windows-msvc. Each archive ships with a .sha256 checksum.

From source

cargo install --git https://github.com/webstonehq/tuxedo

Or clone and build:

git clone https://github.com/webstonehq/tuxedo
cd tuxedo
cargo build --release
./target/release/tuxedo [FILE]

Requires the Rust 2024 edition (recent stable toolchain).

Usage

tuxedo [FILE]      # open FILE (created if missing)
tuxedo             # open ./todo.txt, or a sample file if none
tuxedo --sample    # open the bundled sample file in the temp dir
tuxedo --help
tuxedo --version

If FILE is omitted, tuxedo opens ./todo.txt from the current working directory if it exists. Otherwise it falls back to a sample todo.txt in the system temp directory so you can poke around without committing to a path.

Edits are persisted on every change via atomic write (write .tmp, rename).

If the file changes on disk (another editor, a sync client, a script), tuxedo notices on the next keypress, or within ~250 ms while idle, and reloads. The keystroke that triggered the reload is consumed — press it again to act on the fresh state — and the status bar flashes a notice.

Pressing A appends every completed task to a sibling done.txt and removes them from the working file (atomically: done.txt is written before the originals are dropped).

Keybindings

Navigation

Editing

Filtering, sort, view

Layout & theme

System

Two-key chord prompts (gg, dd, fp, fc) show a g… / d… / f… indicator in the status-bar mode chip while the leader is armed; the window is 600 ms.

todo.txt format

Standard todo.txt lines:

(A) 2026-04-28 Call dentist @phone +health due:2026-05-08

• (A) — priority, A through Z (omit for none)
• 2026-04-28 — creation date in ISO 8601
• +project — project tag
• @context — context tag
• key:value — extension; due:YYYY-MM-DD is recognized for sort and agenda grouping

Completed tasks are prefixed with x and a completion date:

x 2026-05-05 2026-05-01 Submit expense report +work

Configuration

Persisted to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/tuxedo/config.toml. Cycling theme, density, or sort, and toggling sidebars / line-numbers / done-visibility all update the file. Unknown keys are ignored, so older binaries don't break on newer files.

Development

mise run fmt      # cargo fmt --all
mise run clippy   # cargo clippy --all-targets --locked -- -D warnings
mise run test     # cargo test --locked

CI runs all three on every push and pull request. Tasks are also runnable as plain cargo commands if you don't use mise.

Acknowledgments

• todo.txt by Gina Trapani — the format that makes a tool like this possible.
• ratatui and crossterm — the rendering and terminal-input crates tuxedo is built on.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. For larger changes, please open an issue first to discuss the approach. Run mise run fmt clippy test (or the plain cargo equivalents) before submitting.

License

Released under the MIT License.