reminder-sink 0.1.1

A unobtrusive, scriptable reminder/habit/todo task-runner

This is a unobtrusive, scriptable reminder/habit/todo task-runner. This does not actually have any way to setup/remind you for specific habits/tasks, it provides more of a set of rules which make for an unobtrusive reminder/habit tracker, it acts as the "sink" for all my other tools/scripts

Probably easiest explained with some examples of scripts this might run:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# remind me to listen to a new album once a week

# interfaces with my spreadsheet where I track my albums
# https://github.com/seanbreckenridge/albums
LISTENCOUNT="$(hpi query -r 1w my.nextalbums.history | jq 'length')" || exit 1

if [[ "${LISTENCOUNT}" == '0' ]]; then
    exit 2  # this has 'expired', exit code 2 means print the script name
else
    exit 0  # all good, I've listened to a new album recently
fi

flipflop is a tool which lets me toggle todos for things that I need to do often. Think like: re-add an energy bar to my bag, refill medication.

I'll often run flipflop when I'm away from my computer using termux on my phone. The data for that is then synced to my computer with syncthing

Instead of adding some reminder system inside flipflop, reminder-sink is the 'sink' for the data:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
OUTPUT="$(flipflop.py status --filter-on -o json | jq 'keys[]' -r)"

if [[ -n "$OUTPUT" ]]; then
	echo "$OUTPUT"
	exit 3  # this has 'expired', exit code 3 prints the output of this script
fi
exit 0  # no output, nothing to do from flipflop

So, if I was to run reminder-sink and all of these had expired, I'd get something like:

$ reminder-sink run
listen_to_album   # from the name of the script
refill_medication  # these 2 lines were the output of 'flipflop.py status'
add_energy_bar

Instead of reminding me once a day to do something, this uses local data (or an API request if you want -- its just a script, you can do whatever you want!) to determine if I've done it within the timeframe

I really dislike habit building/reminder apps that interrupt me while Im doing other things. When I get the notification to remind me to do something, it feels like I have to do it at that moment, else I'll forget or delay it, which is totally antithetical to actually building a habit

But, if there's no reminder, I often forget to do things.

Instead, this displays the number of tasks which have expired in my menu bar. So, its still visible to me and I'll glance whenever I have a free minute, but I don't get interrupted or feel like I have to 'snooze'/delay the habit.

I also don't feel too horrible if there's a number there for a couple hours, I get around to the task eventually

I generally track my habits with my Self type using ttally, and use i3blocks for my status bar. The block for reminder-sink looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# if I left-click the icon, send a notification with what's expired
case "${BLOCK_BUTTON}" in
1)
    notify-send "$(reminder-sink run)"
    ;;
esac

reminder-sink run | wc -l

You could of course script together a little cron job that does actually remind you once an hour if you have any expired jobs:

OUT="$(reminder-sink run)"
if [[ -n "${OUT}" ]]; then
    notify-send "${OUT}"
fi

Or just run reminder-sink run when you start up a new terminal or something, this is very flexible

You can see some of my other reminder-sink jobs in my dotfiles, but I use this for stuff like:

• reminding me to log my weight at least once a week
• making sure I drink enough water (using ttally)
• listen to album once a week (by using my spreadsheet)
• tracking physical activity
• remind me to re-fill on medication when it runs out
• watch something on my movie/tv show backlog once every couple days (this gets tracked automatically by my mpv-history-daemon)

Usage

Usage: reminder-sink [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  reminders-sink is a script that takes other scripts as input and runs them
  in parallel. The exit code of each script it runs determines what reminder-
  sink does:

  0: I've done this task recently, no need to warn
  2: I haven't done this task recently, print the script name
  3: I haven't done this task recently, print the output of the script
  Anything else: Fatal error

  You can set the REMINDER_SINK_PATH environment variable to a colon-delimited
  list of directories that contain reminder-sink jobs. For example, in your
  shell profile, set:

  export REMINDER_SINK_PATH="${HOME}/.local/share/reminder-sink:${HOME}/Documents/reminder-sink"

  This scans the directories for executables and runs them in parallel. A
  script is considered enabled if it is executable or if the file name ends
  with '.enabled'.

Options:
  -d, --debug  print debug information  [env var: REMINDER_SINK_DEBUG]
  -h, --help   Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  list     list all scripts
  run      run all scripts in parallel
  silence  temporarily silence a reminder
  test     test a script

  See https://github.com/seanbreckenridge/reminder-sink for more information

This uses the shebang of the script (e.g. #!/usr/bin/env bash or #!/usr/bin/python3) to determine what to run the file with. If it can't detect properly, it uses bash (you can change that like REMINDER_SINK_DEFAULT_INTERPRETER=python)

Example

$ reminder-sink list
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/data/reminder-sink/self_type_common.py'), enabled=False)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/data/reminder-sink/physical_activity.enabled'), enabled=True)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/data/reminder-sink/mal_sources'), enabled=False)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/flipflop'), enabled=True)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/weight'), enabled=True)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/listen_to_album'), enabled=True)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/food'), enabled=True)
Script(path=PosixPath('/home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/water'), enabled=True)

This runs the scripts in parallel, with the number of threads equal to the number of cores you have available:

$ reminder-sink --debug run
2023-10-06 00:54:28,197 DEBUG - reminder-sink: Running scripts with 16 threads
2023-10-06 00:54:28,197 DEBUG - reminder-sink: Searching /home/sean/data/reminder-sink
2023-10-06 00:54:28,197 DEBUG - self_type_common: not enabled
2023-10-06 00:54:28,197 DEBUG - physical_activity: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/data/reminder-sink/physical_activity.enabled'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,199 DEBUG - mal_sources: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/data/reminder-sink/mal_sources'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,199 DEBUG - reminder-sink: finished searching /home/sean/data/reminder-sink
2023-10-06 00:54:28,199 DEBUG - reminder-sink: Searching /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink
2023-10-06 00:54:28,200 DEBUG - flipflop: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/flipflop'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,201 DEBUG - weight: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/weight'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,203 DEBUG - listen_to_album: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/listen_to_album'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,203 DEBUG - food: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/food'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,204 DEBUG - reminder-sink: finished searching /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink
2023-10-06 00:54:28,204 DEBUG - water: Starting '/usr/bin/env bash /home/sean/.local/scripts/reminder-sink/water'
2023-10-06 00:54:28,218 DEBUG - mal_sources: (took 0.01922) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,306 DEBUG - flipflop: (took 0.10657) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,319 DEBUG - physical_activity: (took 0.12172) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,321 DEBUG - weight: (took 0.12033) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,346 DEBUG - food: (took 0.14306) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,357 DEBUG - water: (took 0.15303) with exit code 0 and output ''
2023-10-06 00:54:28,436 DEBUG - listen_to_album: (took 0.23399) with exit code 0 and output ''

To temporarily silence a reminder, you can use the 'silence' command:

Usage: reminder-sink silence [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Silences a reminder for some duration

  This can be useful to ignore a reminder temporarily without modifying the
  underlying mechanism to check for the reminder

  To change the location of the file where this stores silenced reminders, you
  can set the REMINDER_SINK_SILENT_FILE envvar

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  add    silence a reminder
  file   print location of silenced reminders file
  list   list silenced reminders
  reset  reset all silenced reminders

I have a binding in my i3 blocklet that lets me quickly ignore an active reminder with fzf:

reminder-sink silence add "$(reminder-sink run | fzf --header="What to silence?")"

Installation

Requires python3.10+

To install with pip, run:

pip install reminder-sink

Tests

git clone 'https://github.com/seanbreckenridge/reminder-sink'
cd ./reminder-sink
pip install '.[testing]'
flake8 ./reminder_sink
mypy ./reminder_sink