TodoCity

Turn any text into a dated task — privately, on your Mac. Then watch your city's lights come on as you get things done.

Copy a message, an email or a web page and press ⌘C once more. TodoCity writes the to-do, finds the due date and reminds you on time. A small AI model runs entirely on your own computer, so nothing you capture ever leaves it.

Free and open source · Apple silicon and Intel · one model download from inside the app

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TodoCity in one minute

1. Capture. Copy any text and press ⌘C again — or select it and press your capture shortcut. A card drops down from the menu bar with the task, its date and time already filled in. Press Return.
2. Plan. Your tasks sit in Today, Calendar, Anytime and Someday, in projects with sub-tasks and deadlines. Drag a task onto a day or an hour to plan it.
3. Get reminded. When a task's time comes, TodoCity tells you — with Done and Snooze one click away.
4. Watch your city grow. Every task is a home in your own 3D city. Finish it, someone moves in, and the lights come on.

Everything runs on your Mac. There's no account, no cloud and no tracking.

Your city: Lights On

Every task is a home. Finish it, someone moves in, and the lights come on.

You're the mayor of a new city. It starts quiet and dark, and your job is to fill it with people — and the only way anyone moves in is when you get something done.

In your city	In TodoCity	What you see
An apartment building	A project	It goes up when you start the project. The older the project, the closer to downtown it stands.
A floor	A section of a project	You name it: "1st Floor: Travel", "2nd Floor: Program". Tasks on no floor live on the ground floor.
A home	A task	A new task is an empty home with a dark window. Finish it and someone moves in: the lights come on, and stay on for good.
A faint glow	Sub-tasks under way	Getting a home ready — paint, keys, boiler — is a checklist. Tick some sub-tasks and the window glows behind the curtains.
Blinking amber	An overdue task	Someone's waiting at the door.
A house	A task in no project	Little houses line the edge of town; their porch lights come on when they're done.
"Coming soon" plots	Someday ideas	Ideas you haven't committed to yet.
"Moving in today" billboard	Today's timed tasks	On the building's roof, in time order.
A rooftop light	A finished project	Every home in the building is lived in.
A crane and trucks	A project just starting	A crane over an empty lot; trucks circle buildings with nobody moved in yet.
Luxury cars	Your tallest tower	The project you've finished the most of.
Population	Every task you've finished	Your number as mayor: "Mayor Sam · Lumen Bay · population 198".

Milestones: your city grows with you

Your population is every task you've finished. At each milestone the city gains something new — for good. Open your city and click Milestones to see the rules, what's built and how far it is to the next one.

Population	Your city gains
10	🏮 Street lamps on every corner
25	🌳 A park at the south end of town
50	⛲ A fountain in the park: the town square
100	🚆 A train line looping round the city
250	⛵ A harbour with a pier, a lighthouse and boats
500	🏟️ A stadium with floodlights
1,000	🌉 A bridge across the harbour to a second island

The rules. What's built stays built: un-ticking or deleting a task never takes anything away. There are no streaks, points or penalties, and rewards are only for your city — every feature of the app is yours from day one. Each milestone is celebrated once and adds a chapter to the city's Story.

The shape of a building. Each floor is as wide as its homes need — a floor with 20 homes is wider than one with 4. Floors are stacked with the most homes at the bottom, so every building narrows as it rises; when a floor outgrows the one below, TodoCity restacks them (their names go with them).

The city is alive. Cars drive every street with soft headlights, a few trees and bushes line the pavements, trucks come and go around buildings under construction, and luxury cars circle your tallest tower. (Everything stays still if your Mac is set to reduce motion.)

Explore it. In full screen your city sits in the bottom-right corner and glows whenever someone moves in. Click it to open the city in 3D:

• Drag to turn it to any angle and tilt it, scroll to zoom, double-click to reset (arrow keys, + − and 0 work too).
• Hover a window to see its task — empty, being readied, overdue, or when someone moved in. Hover a building for how many homes are lived in and still empty.
• Click a building and TodoCity glides to it and opens that project; click the houses for tasks in no project, or a plot for Someday.
• Story walks you through all of this, page by page.
• See the last 7 days, 30 days or all time: new residents, population, your tallest tower, finished projects and your busiest moving day.

Share it. Share makes a picture of your city with its name and, if you like, how many things you did this week. Copy it or save it to Downloads. The picture is made on your Mac and contains no task names, notes or times — and project names stay off unless you turn them on.

Prefer a clean screen? Make the city card small, or hide it in Settings → Your city.

Three ways to see your tasks

	The side panel docks at the edge of your screen: today's list, a week strip to drag tasks onto other days, and everything else one click away in the list menu. Press ⇧⌘H to show or hide it, even over full-screen apps.
	The menu-bar dropdown opens from the TodoCity icon: today's agenda next to your calendar, frosted over whatever you're doing. Captures drop down here for review.
	Full screen (⌃⌘F, or the expand button in the panel) turns TodoCity into a full window with a sidebar, tasks that open in place, a month calendar on the right, a week calendar — and your city. It gets a Dock icon while it's open; the green button at the top left takes you back to the side panel.

Features

Capture from anywhere

• ⌘C twice. Copy as usual, then press ⌘C again within a moment. Works in every app, no permissions needed.
• Or a shortcut. Select text and press ⇧⌘S (change it in Settings → Capture & shortcuts) — no copying at all. Or right-click → Add to TodoCity.
• Dates done right. "by Friday 3pm", "every Monday", "tomorrow evening" become a real day, time and repeat — and "by Friday" becomes a deadline. When a phrase is ambiguous, TodoCity asks instead of guessing.
• Lists become sub-tasks. Capture a bulleted list and it turns into a checklist.
• Back to the source. Each task remembers where it came from — the Slack thread, the email, the web page — and opens it in one click.

Quick add

Press ⇧⌘Space anywhere and type pay rent friday 5pm every month #home. TodoCity shows how it reads the date as you type. (In the app's own add field, @Name also puts the task in a project.)

Today, with its hours

Today shows what's due and planned for This evening, with a month calendar and the day's hours beside it: drag a task onto an hour to time it, or onto a date to move it there. A dot under a date means something's planned; a red one means something's late. (In the side panel, press V to switch Today between a list and hours.)

Overdue, in one place

Anything whose day, time or deadline has passed gathers in Overdue in the sidebar, with a count — instead of a banner on every screen. Move them to today in one click, reschedule by dragging onto the calendar, or tick them off.

Your week

Calendar shows the next seven days, every hour of the day, filling the window — your tasks beside your calendar events. Drag tasks between days and hours, click an empty hour to add one there, and drag tasks with no date onto the week to plan them.

Every detail of a task

In full screen, every task shows its notes and sub-tasks right under it — tick sub-tasks without opening anything. Click a task and it opens in place: its title, notes, sub-tasks, When (a day, a time, this evening or someday), a separate deadline, its project and section, and repeat. Snooze, skip one repeat, pause a series or delete — everything saves as you go, and Done closes it.

Projects and sections

• Start a project with the + next to Projects in the sidebar — even before it has any tasks.
• Open a project in the sidebar to see its sections, listed like Slack channels ("# General", "# Travel", "# Program"), with how many tasks each has to do. General holds the project's tasks with no section. Click a section for its own page: done tasks stay there, crossed out, and Add Task puts the new task straight in that section. In the city, each section is a floor of the project's building.
• Give a project its own color from its ⋯ menu: its tasks' checkboxes, calendar blocks and dots on the month all take that color.
• The calendar on the right follows you: inside a project (or one section), the month and the day's hours show only that project's (or section's) tasks.
• Rename or delete a project or a section from its ⋯ menu. Move or delete its tasks first, then delete it.
• Add Task at the top right picks the project, section, date and time right in the form. The form closes once the task is added.

Finished tasks go to the Logbook. A task added with no date and no project goes straight to Someday, where ideas wait until you plan them.

Modes: Work, Personal, or your own

The sidebar's switch at the top picks a mode. In Work, Today, Calendar, Anytime, the menu bar and notifications show only your work projects (and tasks with no project); everything else waits, a click away ("4 more today outside Work · Show"). Personal starts with every project. Make more in Settings → Modes: tick the projects each one shows, which calendars it shows, whether notifications follow it, and which project new tasks go to. Each Mac remembers its own mode — Work on the work laptop, Personal at home — while the tasks stay the same everywhere. Switch with ⌃⌥1, ⌃⌥2…, or ⌃⌥0 for everything.

Reminders and check-ins

• Notifications with Done, Snooze and Tomorrow — or one morning summary instead.
• When a task's time comes, the menu-bar dropdown opens on just that task, everything else blurred. It never takes your keyboard.
• Once a day, it asks you to plan tasks that have no date, one tap each.
• Repeating tasks schedule the next one when you finish; skip one or pause the series any time.

Connectors

• Your other Macs keeps the same tasks on your work and personal Macs — end-to-end encrypted, no iCloud or account needed. See Sync between your Macs.
• Calendar shows your meetings beside your tasks (read-only; includes Google, Outlook and iCloud calendars added to the Mac).
• Apple Reminders syncs both ways — off by default.
• AI agents — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf and LM Studio can add tasks ("add a TodoCity task to send the deck Friday 3pm"). They can never read your list, and you approve every task.
• Watch my screen (optional) suggests tasks from what's in front of you — asks of you and things you promised — using the on-device model. Password managers, Keychain and terminals are never read.
• Email to tasks has Claude Code check your new Outlook email on a schedule and send the action items to TodoCity for review.

And more

• Search and tags — / or ⌘K to search, #tags to filter, ⌘Z undoes anything.
• Select several with ⌘-click or ⇧-click and complete, move or delete them together.
• Dark by default, light or following your Mac.
• Your data, your files — one SQLite file on your Mac, daily backups, export to CSV or JSON.

Make it yours

Settings → Appearance and Settings → Your city let you pick:

• an accent color (purple, blue, green, orange or pink);
• which list TodoCity opens to (where you left off, Today, Calendar or Anytime);
• the first day of the week and a 12- or 24-hour clock;
• whether notes and sub-tasks show under each task, and compact rows;
• your city's sky (follow Appearance, always night or always dusk) and whether its cars and blinking windows move.

Moving from Things 3

Settings → Import Data brings your whole Things 3 library into TodoCity. It all happens on your Mac: TodoCity reads a copy of Things' database, and Things itself isn't changed, so you can keep using it while you try TodoCity.

1. Open Things 3 on this Mac and let it finish syncing. If you only use Things on iPhone or iPad, install Things 3 for Mac and sign in to Things Cloud first.
2. In TodoCity, open Settings → Import Data and click Find my Things library. If macOS asks whether TodoCity may access data from other apps, click Allow.
3. Check the preview. Untick any project you'd rather leave behind, and choose whether to bring the Logbook and cancelled to-dos.
4. Keep in sync (optional). Leave it on and new to-dos and changes in Things keep flowing into TodoCity on their own. Your edits in TodoCity stay, and nothing is sent back to Things. Stop syncing any time, for one project (its ⋯ menu) or all of Things (Settings → Import Data).
5. Click Import. TodoCity backs itself up first (Settings → Backups & export → "before import"), so you can undo it.

Running it again later only brings to-dos that are new since last time, even if you've deleted some here.

Things 3	TodoCity
Project	Project
Heading	Section
To-do	Task
Checklist	Sub-tasks
Area	Its projects come as they are; to-dos right in the area become a project named after it
Inbox, loose to-dos	Tasks with no project
Today, This Evening, Upcoming	The same day (and evening). Today items from earlier days come in for today, not as overdue
Anytime / Someday	No day / Someday
Deadline, reminder time	Deadline, time of day
Repeating to-do	The same repeat when it's daily, weekdays, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly or yearly; other patterns come once, with a note
Tags	#tags on the task
Logbook	Done tasks: lit windows in your city

Trashed to-dos stay behind. Can't find your library? Click Choose the database myself…: in Finder, Go → Go to Folder… ~/Library/Group Containers/JLMPQHK86H.com.culturedcode.ThingsMac, open the ThingsData-… folder and pick Things Database.thingsdatabase. If macOS blocks it, give TodoCity Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security, or copy that folder to your Desktop and choose the copy.

Moving from Todoist

Settings → Import Data → Todoist brings your Todoist into TodoCity. Todoist isn't changed, so you can keep using it while you try TodoCity.

1. In Todoist (web or app), open Settings → Integrations → Developer and click Copy API token.
2. In TodoCity, paste it and click Connect. TodoCity reads your projects, sections, tasks, sub-tasks, labels, comments and completed tasks straight from Todoist's servers to your Mac. Big accounts take a minute while completed tasks come in, year by year.
3. Check the preview. Untick any project you'd rather leave behind, and choose whether to bring completed tasks.
4. Keep in sync (optional). Leave it on and Todoist changes keep flowing in every few minutes. The token is then kept in your Keychain; with sync off, it's used once and forgotten. Your edits in TodoCity stay, and nothing is sent back to Todoist.
5. Click Import. TodoCity backs itself up first (Settings → Backups & export → "before import"). Running it again later only brings tasks that are new since last time.

No token? Export each project with ⋯ → Export as CSV in Todoist (or, on Pro, download a backup from Settings → Backups and unzip it), then choose No token? Use CSV files instead and pick all the .csv files. CSV exports carry your open tasks; connect with a token to bring completed ones too.

Todoist	TodoCity
Project (and sub-projects)	Project
Inbox	Tasks with no project
Section	Section
Task	Task
Sub-tasks, any depth	Sub-tasks
Labels	#tags on the task
Priority 1–3	Priority P1–P3
Description and comments	Notes
Date and time, deadline	Day and time, deadline
Recurring date	The same repeat when it's daily, weekdays, weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly or yearly; other patterns come once, with a note
Completed tasks	Done tasks: lit windows in your city

Sync between your Macs

Settings → Your other Macs keeps your tasks the same on, say, a work laptop and a personal one — even when the work Mac can't sign in to iCloud.

1. On one Mac, choose Show a code. It shows a code like K7MX-4QRB for 10 minutes.
2. On the other, choose I have a code and type it in.
3. Both Macs show six digits. Check they're the same, then confirm on both. That's how you know nothing got between your Macs.

From then on, changes on either Mac show up on the other within about 30 seconds while both are open; a Mac that was asleep or offline catches up within a minute of coming back. Add more Macs the same way.

How it stays private. Your Macs share a key that is made on your Mac, handed over only inside the pairing (sealed with a secret the two Macs work out together) and kept in your Keychain. Every change is locked with it (ChaCha20-Poly1305) before it leaves. In between sits a small relay (relay/) that holds the sealed boxes until your other Macs pick them up and then deletes them — after 30 days at the latest. It never has the key, so it can't read task titles, notes, projects or Mac names, and there's no account behind it.

• Keep a project on one Mac. Under Keep on this Mac only, switch on any project — say, a personal one on your work Mac. Its tasks stay where they are and leave your other Macs.
• Edits on two Macs at once? Each detail keeps its newest edit: rename a task on one Mac and tick it off on the other, and both changes stick.
• Away for more than 30 days? That Mac asks the others for a full copy when it's back.
• Stop syncing. Remove… another Mac, or Turn off sync on this Mac. Tasks stay on every Mac either way. Lost a Mac? Turn sync off on your other Macs and pair them again: that makes a new key the lost Mac doesn't have.
• Notifications, snoozes and Apple Reminders links stay per Mac.

Install

1. Download TodoCity-macOS.dmg.
2. Open it and drag TodoCity into Applications.
3. Launch TodoCity. It's signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other Mac app.
4. Follow the three-step tour. Pick the on-device model (TodoCity recommends the best one for your Mac and downloads it once), choose how to capture — ⌘C twice, or a shortcut (which needs Accessibility access, how macOS lets an app read selected text) — and try a capture on a sample message.

There's nothing else to install. TodoCity opens at login and updates itself — look for Restart to update when a new version is ready.

Verify your download (optional). Every release is built by this repository's public release workflow and carries a signed build-provenance attestation. With the GitHub CLI:

gh attestation verify ~/Downloads/TodoCity-macOS.dmg --repo pillieshwar/TodoCity

Keyboard shortcuts

Anywhere on your Mac — change them in Settings → Capture & shortcuts:

Shortcut	Action
⌘C ⌘C	Capture what you just copied (copy, then press ⌘C again)
⇧⌘S	Capture the selected text as a task (when you choose a shortcut instead)
⇧⌘Space	Quick add — type a task
⇧⌘H	Show or hide TodoCity (handy over full-screen apps, where the menu bar is hidden)

In the task list — press ? to see them in the app:

Key	Action	Key	Action
↑ ↓	Move between tasks	T / M / W	Move to today / tomorrow / next week
Space	Complete	S	Snooze
E	Edit title	N	Edit description
D	Change date and time	O	Open the source
F	Today ↔ Anytime	⌫	Delete
/, ⌘F or ⌘K	Search	⌘Z	Undo
C	Sub-tasks (checklist)	P	Move to a project
V	Today as a list or in hours	A	Add a task
⌃⌘F	Full screen ↔ side panel	⌘\	Show or hide the sidebar (full screen)

Privacy

• Your selections never leave your Mac. Text is read through macOS Accessibility and sent only to the model runtime listening on 127.0.0.1, with a random port and key for each session.
• Tasks are stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/TodoCity/ (Settings → Backups & export → Show data folder), with seven days of backups in backups/.
• TodoCity uses the internet only for: model downloads you start (from Hugging Face, verified against their SHA-256), checking GitHub for updates (you can turn this off in Settings → General), and — only if you pair your Macs — sync.
• Sync is end-to-end encrypted. Paired Macs pass changes through a relay as sealed boxes it can't open; the key exists only on your Macs, in the Keychain. The relay keeps no logs, deletes each box once every Mac has it (30 days at most), and has no accounts. See Sync between your Macs.
• AI agents can write, never read. If you turn on Connectors → AI agents, apps on your Mac like Claude Desktop and Claude Code can send tasks to TodoCity over MCP. They can't see, change or delete anything; each task waits in the menu bar until you add it. It works only on this Mac, through a private local connection — no network.
• Watching your screen stays on your Mac. If you turn on Connectors → Watch my screen, TodoCity reads the text of the window in front (never password managers, Keychain, System Settings or terminals, and never what you type), runs the on-device model on new text, and keeps none of it.
• No accounts, analytics or telemetry. Notifications are scheduled by your Mac, not a server.
• The one exception you control: if you turn on Apple Reminders sync with a list stored in iCloud, those tasks sync through iCloud. TodoCity warns you and asks first; pick an "On My Mac" list to stay fully local.

How it works

select text ─▶ read selection ─▶ local model ─▶ resolve the date ─▶ you confirm ─▶ SQLite ─▶ reminder
               Accessibility,     JSON-schema     in code, against     Return to save
               clipboard fallback constrained     today's real date

1. Capture (src-tauri/src/capture/) reads the selection with macOS Accessibility (AXSelectedText). If an app doesn't expose it, TodoCity sends Copy and restores your clipboard afterwards — only if nothing else wrote to it in the meantime, and never when it holds images or files. Add to TodoCity in the right-click menu receives the text directly from macOS and doesn't touch the clipboard at all.
2. Extract (src-tauri/src/engine.rs, crates/todocity-core/src/llm.rs) starts the bundled llama-server on demand and asks for exactly three fields — task, date_text and date_confidence — under a JSON Schema at temperature 0. Output is validated in Rust, with one repair retry. The runtime stops after five idle minutes to give the memory back.
3. Resolve the date (src/lib/dates.ts, src/lib/schedule.ts): the model only copies the phrase; deterministic code turns it into a day, time and repeat rule. Ambiguous phrases ("next Friday" on a Tuesday, 3/4) offer both readings.
4. Store and remind (crates/todocity-core/src/store.rs, src-tauri/src/notifications/) keeps tasks in SQLite and shows native notifications with actions when they're due.

Selected text is treated as untrusted input: it's wrapped and sanitized as data, instructions live only in the system prompt, and the strict schema means the most any text can do is suggest a task, which you review.

Build from source

Prerequisites: Rust (stable), Node 20+, CMake and the Tauri prerequisites (xcode-select --install on macOS).

git clone https://github.com/pillieshwar/TodoCity.git && cd TodoCity
npm install
scripts/build-llama-server.sh   # build the bundled model runtime once (a few minutes)
npm run tauri dev               # run in development
npm run tauri build             # TodoCity.app and a .dmg in target/release/bundle/

During tauri dev, macOS grants Accessibility permission to your terminal, not to TodoCity. To use an existing Ollama instead of the bundled runtime, set PLUCK_OLLAMA_URL=http://127.0.0.1:11434 (and optionally PLUCK_MODEL).

Tests

cargo test --workspace   # schema, prompt, retries, downloads, clipboard guard, store, sync, shortcuts
npm test                 # date, time and repeat parsing, quick add, due chips, search and tags

Project layout

crates/todocity-core/   Platform-independent Rust: prompt and schema, model clients, verified downloads,
                     clipboard guard, SQLite store, recurrence, Reminders sync logic, Mac-to-Mac sync
src-tauri/           Tauri v2 shell: menu bar, shortcuts, windows, capture, notifications, updates
src/                 React + TypeScript UI: task panel, menu-bar popover, quick add; src/lib holds the logic
relay/               The sync relay: a Cloudflare Worker that stores and forwards sealed boxes
scripts/             llama-server build, icon rendering, UI preview screenshots

Built with Tauri 2, Rust, React and TypeScript, llama.cpp and SQLite.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
⌘C twice does nothing	Check that Settings → Capture & shortcuts → Press ⌘C twice to capture is on and the TodoCity icon is in the menu bar. Copies made inside TodoCity itself are ignored.
⇧⌘S does nothing	Check that the TodoCity icon is in the menu bar and Accessibility is allowed. If another app uses the same shortcut, pick a new one in Settings → Capture & shortcuts.
"Select some text first"	Select the text again, then press the shortcut. Password fields always stay private.
Add to TodoCity isn't in the right-click menu	Open TodoCity from Applications once, then log out and back in. You can also enable it in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services → Text. Some apps list it under Services.
No reminders appear	Settings → Notifications shows whether they're allowed and can send a test notification.
Accessibility is asked for again after an update	In Privacy & Security → Accessibility, remove TodoCity with –, then capture again and re-allow it.
The menu-bar icon is somewhere you don't want it	Hold ⌘ and drag it. macOS remembers the spot, including across updates. TodoCity starts next to the battery, but never moves the icon again after that.
Something else	Settings → Help → Log file opens TodoCity's log. It stays on your Mac — attach it to an issue.

Uninstall

Quit TodoCity from its menu-bar icon, move it from Applications to the Bin and remove it from Privacy & Security → Accessibility. To delete your tasks and models too:

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/TodoCity ~/Library/Application\ Support/app.pluck.desktop

If you used sync, turn it off first (Settings → Your other Macs), or delete the "app.todocity.sync" item in Keychain Access afterwards.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome.

1. Open an issue describing the bug or idea — for bugs, attach the log from Settings → Help → Log file.
2. Fork the repository and create a branch.
3. Run cargo test --workspace and npm test before opening a pull request. CI builds the app on macOS and Windows and runs the security checks. Commit Cargo.lock and package-lock.json changes along with the dependency change that caused them.

By opening a pull request, you agree that your contribution is shared under this project's license, and that the project's author may also use it under other terms.

Maintainers: releases are cut from Actions → Release → Run workflow after bumping version in package.json, src-tauri/tauri.conf.json and Cargo.toml. The workflow builds a universal .dmg, signs the update archive and publishes latest.json for in-app updates.

Security

Found a vulnerability? Please report it privately — see SECURITY.md. Dependencies are locked (Cargo.lock, package-lock.json), updated weekly by Dependabot, and checked on every pull request by cargo-deny, npm audit, OSV-Scanner and zizmor.

License

🔒 Source-available, non-commercial. TodoCity is free, and its code is open to read, change and share for personal and other non-commercial use under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Commercial use is not allowed — that includes selling the app, a modified version, or a paid service built on it. Contributions are welcome and are shared under the same terms.

Copyright © 2026 Eshwar Pilli. All rights not granted by the license are reserved. Want to use it commercially? Open an issue to ask.