Commands

kasl provides a comprehensive set of commands for work activity tracking, task management, and reporting.

Command Overview

Core Commands

• setup - Set up application configuration, module by module
• config - Read and change one setting at a time, checked against the config’s JSON Schema
• watch - Start activity monitoring
• task - Manage tasks and work items
• report - Generate and submit reports
• sum - View monthly summaries
• end - Close today’s workday by hand

Data Management

• export - Export data to various formats
• pauses - View pauses and record ones the monitor missed

Incoming work

• inbox - Issues assigned to you, polled in the background from Jira and from plugin sources

Organization

• tag - Manage task tags and categorization
• template - Create and use task templates

System Integration

• server - Connect to a team kasl-server, send your days to it, tell it whether you are working right now if you choose to, and read what it stores about you
• autostart - Configure automatic startup
• self-update - Update application to latest version
• completions - Print a shell completion script
• plugin - List, set up and run plugins: programs named kasl-plugin-* that hear kasl’s events and fill the inbox

Coding assistants

• mcp - Serve the day, the week, tasks and the inbox to a coding assistant over MCP, read-only

Quick Reference

Daily Workflow

# Start monitoring (if not already running)
kasl watch

# Create today's tasks
kasl task add --name "Code review" --completeness 0
kasl task add --name "Team meeting" --completeness 0

# Update task progress
kasl task edit 1

# View today's report
kasl report

# Submit report (if configured)
kasl report --send

Task Management

# Create tasks
kasl task add --name "Task name" --comment "Description" --completeness 0

# List tasks
kasl task list
kasl task list --all

# Edit tasks
kasl task edit 1
kasl task edit

# Remove tasks
kasl task remove 1 2 3
kasl task remove --today

Recording Missed Absences

# Record an hour-long lunch the monitor missed
kasl pauses add --start 13:00 --minutes 60 --reason "lunch"

# Record a short absence that must survive the duration filter
kasl pauses add --start 16:20 --minutes 10 --keep

# Review the day
kasl pauses list

Data Export

# Export today's data
kasl export --format csv

# Export all data
kasl export all --format json

# Export to specific file
kasl export --output my_report.csv

Tag Management

# Create tags
kasl tag add "urgent" --color "red"
kasl tag add "backend" --color "blue"

# List tags
kasl tag list

# Assign tags to tasks
kasl task add --name "Fix bug" --tags "urgent,backend"

# Filter by tags
kasl task list --tag "urgent"

Templates

# Create template
kasl template add --name "daily-standup"

# Use template
kasl task add --from-template
kasl task add --template "daily-standup"

Command Categories

Activity Monitoring

Commands for tracking work sessions and activity:

• watch - Core monitoring functionality
• pauses - View pauses and record ones the monitor missed

Task Management

Commands for organizing and tracking work items:

• task - Complete task lifecycle management
• tag - Task categorization and organization
• template - Reusable task templates

Reporting & Analytics

Commands for generating insights and reports:

• report - Daily work reports
• sum - Monthly summaries and statistics
• export - Data export for external analysis

System Management

Commands for application configuration and maintenance:

• setup - Initial setup and configuration
• config - One setting at a time: show, get, set, unset, check
• server - Connection to a team server, the queue of days owed to it, the live pulse, and its privacy manifest
• autostart - System integration
• self-update - Application updates

Output for scripts and logs

• --json, on every command that prints data (report, sum, pauses list, task list/show, tag, template, inbox list/show/rules, server status/queue/pulse/manifest, autostart status, config show/get/check): one JSON document on stdout, everything else on stderr.
• --plain, on every command: the same output without colour, emoji or blank padding, and tables as tab-separated lines that are never cut to the terminal’s width - for logs and grep.
• NO_COLOR is honoured everywhere kasl paints.

The conventions and the full list are in kasl in scripts and CI.

Getting Help

Omitting an identifier

Commands that act on one thing - an inbox issue, a pause, a tag, a task - take its identifier as an argument. Leave the argument out on a terminal and kasl lists what is there and lets you choose, showing summaries and durations rather than bare keys and ids.

This is a convenience for interactive use only. With no terminal attached - under the watch daemon, in CI, behind a pipe - the same command fails and names the argument it wanted, so an unattended run reports the problem instead of hanging on a prompt nobody can answer.

Command Help

Get help for any command:

kasl --help
kasl <command> --help

Examples

View command examples:

# Show all available commands
kasl --help

# Show specific command help
kasl task --help
kasl task add --help
kasl report --help

Interactive Mode

Some commands support interactive mode:

# Interactive task creation
kasl task

# Interactive template selection
kasl task add --from-template

# Interactive task editing
kasl task edit

Options you will meet everywhere

• --help on any command or subcommand prints its own help; kasl --version prints the version.
• --date <YYYY-MM-DD|today> selects the day for report, export and pauses.
• -y/--yes skips the confirmation on destructive commands, which is what makes them usable from a script.
• Commands that would otherwise prompt refuse with an explanatory error when there is no terminal, rather than waiting for an answer nobody can give.

Debug logging is a environment variable, not a flag:

KASL_DEBUG=1 kasl watch --foreground
RUST_LOG=kasl=debug kasl task find

Related pages

• Getting Started - installing kasl and the first run
• Configuration - every setting in one place
• API Integrations - Jira, report submission and the GitLab plugin