chronometrist

A time tracker with a nice interface, using Emacs' timeclock.el

Largely modelled after the Android application, A Time Tracker

Installation

chronometrist requires dash.el

Add the Chronometrist directory to your load-path, and (require 'chronometrist).

Commands

chronometrist

Run M-x chronometrist to see your projects, the time you spent on them today, which one is active, and the total time clocked today.

Hit RET on a project to clock in for it. If it's already clocked in, it will be clocked out (and you'll be prompted for an optional reason).

Whenever you call chronometrist, the cursor will helpfully be placed on the last activity you clocked out of or the current activity clocked in.

Alternatively, hit <numeric prefix> RET anywhere in the buffer to toggle the corresponding project, e.g. C-1 RET will toggle the project with index 1.

Press l to view your timeclock-file (~/.emacs.d/timelog by default). Press r to see a weekly report (see chronometrist-report)

Running M-x chronometrist when the Chronometrist buffer is visible will kill it, so the key you bind it to can function as a toggle.

chronometrist keeps itself updated via an idle timer - no pressing g to update.

chronometrist-report

Run M-x chronometrist-report (or chronometrist with a prefix argument, or press r in the chronometrist buffer) to see a weekly report.

Press b to look at past weeks, and f for future weeks.

Press l to view your timeclock-file, ~/.emacs.d/timelog by default.

Just like chronometrist, chronometrist-report will also toggle the visibilty of the buffer.

chronometrist-report keeps itself updated via an idle timer - no pressing g to update.

Customization

See the Customize groups chronometrist and chronometrist-report for variables intended to be user-customizable.

Roadmap

• New commands for statistics
  • activity-specific - average time spent in $time_period, average days worked on in $time_period, current/longest streaks, ...
  • general - most productive $time_period, GitHub-style work heatmap calendar, ...
• Update when the timeclock-file changes using a filesystem watcher
• Mouse support
• inflatable raptor

chronometrist

1. Add variable to let user control prompting-for-reason behaviour
2. Make clocked-in project row bold, either in addition to the star, or replacing it.
3. 'kill'/discard command (bind to 'k'), which will delete the interval currently being recorded.
   • Most conservative option - it will only operate on the project at point, and will only kill for a clocked-in project.
   • Somewhat less conservative option - it will operate on the currently clocked-in project, no matter where point is.
   • It should ask for confirmation.
4. Custom day start/end time - option to use a specific time to define when a day starts/ends. e.g. 08:00 will mean a day starts and ends at 08:00 instead of the usual 24:00/00:00. Helpful for late sleepers.
5. Fix suggested reasons - the default reason suggested is the last one used. Can't even begin to explain how nonsensical that is. (might be an ido or timeclock.el problem)
   • Make default blank?
   • Possibly make suggestions activity-sensitive e.g. when stopping activity A, don't suggest past reasons used for activity B, C, etc. Add a variable to customize this, because it might not be the behaviour everyone wants.
   • Suggest reasons by frequency? So your most used reason for the task is the default suggestion. If you usually don't provide a reason for the task, the default is nil.
6. Better shortcuts - Shortcuts derived from the first alphabet of each project could be even nicer (but the code to generate them from similarly-named projects would be somewhat complex...)
7. Modeline support - show currently active project + time spent on it so far in the mode-line (see timeclock-mode-line-display)
   • Maybe make modeline slowly change color the longer you do something?
8. Improve help
   • Show shortcuts by consulting the keymap rather than using a hardcoded string.
   • Change 'see weekly report' and 'open log file' to buttons
9. Reminder notifications - a common issue with time trackers is that people forget to clock in/out. A potential solution can be to have Emacs remind people (ideally via desktop notifications?) -
   • when they haven't clocked in, every X minutes (e.g. 30)
   • that they are clocked in, every X minutes (e.g. 30)
   • of course, modeline support might help too.
10. Use make-thread in v26 or the emacs-async library for chronometrist-entries/chronometrist-report-entries
11. Some way to update buffers every second without making Emacs unusable. (impossible?)
12. "Day summary" - for users who use the "reason" feature to note the specifics of their actual work. Combine the reasons together to create a descriptive overview of the work done in the day.

chronometrist-report

1. Highlight column of current day
2. Add support for other locale weeks/weekday names

Miscellaneous

1. README - add images, link to a Jabber webclient
2. [-] Document API somewhere (list of functions, their argument lists, and outputs)
3. Use Cask?
4. Create test timelog file and UI behaviour tests

Contact

Contact the creator and other Emacs users in the Emacs room on the Jabber network - xmpp:emacs@salas.suchat.org?join (For help in getting started with Jabber, click here)

License

Chronometrist is released under your choice of CC0, Unlicense, and WTFPL.

Thanks

wasamasa and #emacs for all their help and support

jwiegley for timeclock.el

blandest for helping me with the name

fiete for testing