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A day with kasl

The point of kasl is that most of the day needs nothing from you. The daemon records the workday while you work; you decide what to call the work and when to file it. This is that day, start to finish.

Once: start the daemon

Section titled “Once: start the daemon”
Terminal window
kasl watch

It goes to the background and returns the PID. Everything below assumes it is running - without it there are no intervals, no pauses and no workday.

Better still, have it start itself:

Terminal window
kasl autostart enable

On Windows this registers a Task Scheduler entry, falling back to the Registry run key without admin rights; on macOS it writes a LaunchAgent, on Linux a systemd user unit. After that the day starts recording when you do.

Morning: what am I working on

Section titled “Morning: what am I working on”

Tasks do not have to be typed from memory. If GitLab or Jira is configured, kasl offers today’s commits and resolved issues as candidates:

Terminal window
kasl task find

Pick from the list. Anything already logged is filtered out, so running it again later in the day offers only what is new.

For work that leaves no commit, add it directly:

Terminal window
kasl task add --name "Design review for the export screen"

If the same kind of task recurs, keep it as a template and stop retyping it:

Terminal window
kasl template add --name standup --task-name "Daily standup" --completeness 100
kasl task add --template standup

Assigned Jira issues arrive on their own. The daemon polls them into an inbox and raises a desktop notification when something new lands on you:

Terminal window
kasl inbox          # what is waiting
kasl inbox take PROJ-412   # turn one into a task

During the day: the parts the monitor cannot see

Section titled “During the day: the parts the monitor cannot see”

The monitor watches the keyboard and the mouse. An hour in a meeting room, a call taken away from the desk, a lunch that ran long - none of it leaves a trace, and all of it counts against the day if left unrecorded.

Put it on the record with its real time:

Terminal window
kasl pauses add --start 13:00 --minutes 45 --reason lunch

Add --keep when the absence is deliberately short and must survive the minimum-duration filter.

Update progress as work moves:

Terminal window
kasl task list          # ids for today
kasl task edit 3        # name, comment, completeness

End of day: look, then file

Section titled “End of day: look, then file”

Look at the day before sending it. The intervals, the breaks and the productivity figure were all recorded as they happened:

Terminal window
kasl report

If the productivity figure looks wrong, it usually means an absence is missing rather than that the day went badly - see Pauses. Record it and look again.

When the day reads true, file it:

Terminal window
kasl report --send

Forgot yesterday? kasl report --last --send files the previous day instead.

Closing the day by hand is only needed when the daemon did not do it for you:

Terminal window
kasl end

End of month

Section titled “End of month”
Terminal window
kasl sum            # the month so far, day by day
kasl sum --send     # file the monthly summary

For a time sheet that wants hours rather than intervals, export the hourly breakdown:

Terminal window
kasl export report --format excel --hourly

What this costs you per day

Section titled “What this costs you per day”

Two commands worth of attention: kasl task find in the morning and kasl report --send at the end, plus a pauses add whenever you step away from the keyboard for something that counts. Everything else the daemon did while you were working.

Section titled “Related pages”
  • watch - the daemon and its settings
  • report - the daily report and submission
  • pauses - recording absences the monitor missed
  • inbox - the Jira inbox in detail
  • Configuration - thresholds behind all of this