Show HN: Time tracking with plain text files

Hello HN!<p>As a daily user (and enthusiast) of plain-text file formats such as markdown, ledger or todo.txt, I thought that there should also exist an equally simple way for tracking time.<p>After some pondering and experimenting I recently released the open-source project “klog”, which is both a file format and a command line tool. The idea is to have a lightweight syntax to record times in plain text, and to be able to run evaluations on the data.<p>I’m happy so far how the basic approach came out, and I’d appreciate some feedback and thoughts (especially on the file format, since that’s the central idea that everything else builds on).<p>For anyone interested, I have also written up some of the backstory behind the project on my blog: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jotaen.net&#x2F;9zRPA&#x2F;klog-time-tracking-plain-textfiles&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jotaen.net&#x2F;9zRPA&#x2F;klog-time-tracking-plain-textfi...</a>

So far i’ve been happy with<p><pre><code> org-clock-in </code></pre> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;orgmode.org&#x2F;manual&#x2F;Clocking-commands.html#Clocking-commands" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;orgmode.org&#x2F;manual&#x2F;Clocking-commands.html#Clocking-c...</a><p>but i know some taskwarrior folks too.<p>what is new and cool here that’s a standout feature for you?

Thanks for building this!<p>I&#x27;m especially excited about the &quot;file format&quot; part! Hope others can implement extra clients around this. I could imagine an android app with nextcloud&#x2F;dropbox integration to sync time tracking entries between devises, e.g.<p>I once started (but never released) an eventful timetracker; where hooks and wrappers would (retrospectively) send events to the timetracker repo (basically just drop json files in a folder) on &quot;events&quot;. Such as `git checkout feature&#x2F;x`, git commit. Or `cd projects&#x2F;foobar` or from some ical feed. Walking through these events once your manager &quot;really really need those hours today&quot; is always easier than retrospectively manually going through git commits, google-calendar, release-logs etc.<p>Seeing your project makes me want to pick that project up and make e.g. &quot;klog.txt&quot; files from a list of such events. Great work, and congrats on actually releasing ;)

Call me crazy, but html is a great way to track time in plain text. That was actually one of the use cases that opened my eyes to the power of html over markdown as a plain text format. One example:<p>&lt;div&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;start&quot;&gt;202102010845&lt;&#x2F;li&gt;&lt;li class=&quot;end&quot;&gt;202002010930&lt;&#x2F;li&gt;&lt;&#x2F;div&gt;<p>You can argue that&#x27;s ugly. And you&#x27;re right, if you open it in a text editor. Thing is, you can use a browser to display it pretty darn nicely. It has all the advantages of plain text, but one massive additional advantage - you can use JS to work with the DOM to do all your queries and calculations in a few lines of code. HTML can be verbose at times, but it doesn&#x27;t really matter if you use text snippets.<p>This is not intended to take anything away from this project. I&#x27;m just saying there&#x27;s a powerful alternative that doesn&#x27;t require the writing of a special processor.

Shameless self promotion: I got tired of using Excel but could not find a simple way to track my time so I built my own and I think many here would find it useful:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rlv-dan&#x2F;cctime" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rlv-dan&#x2F;cctime</a>

This reminded me of ledger, the plain text accounting tool. FWIW, ledger has time tracking and billing capabilities, too.<p>For example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anarcat&#x2F;ledger-timetracking" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anarcat&#x2F;ledger-timetracking</a><p>You can also use the aforementioned org-clock-in with it.

I see #tagging capabilities. When work requires time tracking, an entry usually corresponds to a reference ticket number and&#x2F;or git hash. In a unix|pipe spirit, then posting this well formed data via curl to the usual suspects apis (jira, youtrack, ..). How nice indeed this would be.

This is a fantastic idea!<p>I&#x27;m going to write a similar one for myself. It never occurred to me that I could use a markdown file as a data files to record time against.<p>I keep a log of my work, inspired by .plan files, such as this, I will just tuck in the times against each day and get myself a timesheet system, thanks!<p><pre><code> plan.md ### 2021-01-07-thu :0830-1700-45m * fix for initdb generating wrong index causing the tests to fail and creating new c&#x2F;u every run [bug] * more fixes for tests to run reliably</code></pre>

I have been using the format used by gtimelog[1] for years. It has the benefit of adding one entry per line, so processing is extremely simple.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gtimelog&#x2F;gtimelog&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;formats.rst#timelog-txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gtimelog&#x2F;gtimelog&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;docs&#x2F;format...</a>

Looks interesting! Out of curiosity, why didn&#x27;t you choose sqlite instead of a plaintext format? With sqlite the users could write their own queries to get the information they want. Adding entries manually via db browser is also easy. Besides readability and the possibility of using an arbitrary text editor what are the other advantages of your approach?

Nice. I use a much simpler format which is basically the task name and the number of minutes worked. These lines are appended to a text file for the day that gives me a timesheet. I start a bash script when I start work which counts the minutes and writes the file when I’m done.

This is great. I keep coming back to plain text when I fall out with other tools. I use it for daily logs and journals. I also use it for five-star ratings: books, albums, and daily performance reviews (e.g. ●●●◍◌ as indicating 3.5 stars). Works well for me.

That&#x27;s how the author of ledger uses ledger.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;groups.google.com&#x2F;g&#x2F;ledger-cli&#x2F;c&#x2F;XVR4t1B-XFI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;groups.google.com&#x2F;g&#x2F;ledger-cli&#x2F;c&#x2F;XVR4t1B-XFI</a>

I&#x27;m a big fan of time tracking for personal reasons. Does this give something that timewarrior[0] doesn&#x27;t?<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;timewarrior.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;timewarrior.net</a>

Really love this. I try to keep my contracting work time tracking as simple as possible, but I really hate using the spreadsheet I use now. Going to give this a shot!

I used a txt file and org-mode, then I built <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wakatime.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wakatime.com</a> to automate my time tracking.

Awesome, I wanted to build exactly this and found this project. Would like to build a glossy client for it.