chronometrist/README.md

chronometrist

A time tracker in Emacs with a nice interface

Largely modelled after the Android application, A Time Tracker

• Benefits

  1. Extremely simple and efficient to use
  2. Displays useful information about your time usage
  3. Support for both mouse and keyboard
  4. Human errors in tracking are easily fixed by editing a plain text file
  5. Hooks to let you perform arbitrary actions when starting/stopping tasks

• Limitations

  1. No support (yet) for adding a task without clocking into it.
  2. No support for concurrent tasks.

IMPORTANT: with version v0.3, chronometrist no longer uses timeclock as a dependency and will use its own s-expression-based backend. A command to migrate the timeclock-file, chronometrist-migrate-timelog-file->sexp-file, is provided.

Comparisons

timeclock.el

• Stores data in an s-expression format rather than a line-based one
• Supports attaching tags and arbitrary key-values to time intervals
• Has commands to shows useful summaries
• Has a more useful implementation of hooks (see Hooks)

Org time tracking

• Chronometrist is tailored towards long-term, rarely-changing, everyday tasks, rather than transient ones. You might think of it as a program to help balance your day, or to help you form habits.

Installation

You can get chronometrist from https://framagit.org/contrapunctus/chronometrist/

chronometrist requires dash.el

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

Usage

In the buffers created by the following three commands, you can press l (chronometrist-open-log) to view/edit your chronometrist-file, which by default is ~/.emacs.d/chronometrist.sexp.

All of these commands will kill their buffer when run again with the buffer visible, so the keys you bind them to behave as a toggle.

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 (chronometrist-toggle-task) on a project to start tracking time for it. If it's already clocked in, it will be clocked out. This command runs some hooks, which are useful for a wide range of functionality (see Adding more information below). In some cases, you may want to skip running the hooks - use M-RET (chronometrist-toggle-task-no-hooks) to do that.

You can also 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 r to see a weekly report (see chronometrist-report)

chronometrist keeps itself updated via an idle timer - no need to frequently press g to update.

chronometrist-report

Run M-x chronometrist-report (or chronometrist with a prefix argument of 1, or press r in the chronometrist buffer) to see a weekly report.

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

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

chronometrist-statistics

Run M-x chronometrist-statistics (or chronometrist with a prefix argument of 2) to view statistics.

Press b to look at past time ranges, and f for future ones.

Attaching tags and key values

Part of the reason Chronometrist stores time intervals as property lists is to allow you to add tags and arbitrary key-values to them.

Tags

To be prompted for tags, add chronometrist-tags-add to any hook except chronometrist-before-in-functions, based on your preference (see Hooks). The prompt suggests past combinations you used for the current task, which you can browse with M-p/M-n. You can leave it blank by pressing RET, or skip the prompt just this once by pressing M-RET (chronometrist-toggle-task-no-hooks).

Key-value pairs

Similarly, to be prompted for key-values, add chronometrist-kv-add to any hook except chronometrist-before-in-functions. To exit the prompt, press the key it indicates for quitting - you can then edit the resulting key-values by hand if required. Press C-c C-c to accept the key-values, or C-c C-k to cancel.

Prompt when exiting Emacs

If you wish to be prompted when you exit Emacs while tracking time, you can use this -

(add-hook 'kill-emacs-query-functions 'chronometrist-query-stop)

Time goals/targets

If you wish you could define time goals for some tasks, and have Chronometrist notify you when you're approaching the goal, completing it, or exceeding it, check out the extension chronometrist-goals.el.

Customization

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

Hooks

Chronometrist currently has four hooks -

1. chronometrist-before-in-functions
2. chronometrist-after-in-functions
3. chronometrist-before-out-functions
4. chronometrist-after-out-functions

As their names suggest, these are 'abnormal' hooks, i.e. the functions they contain must accept arguments. In this case, each function must accept exactly one argument, which is the project which is being started or stopped.

Opening certain files when you start a task

An idea from the author's own init -

(defun my-start-project (project)
  (pcase project
    ;; ...
    ("Guitar"
     (find-file-other-window "~/repertoire.org"))
    ;; ...
    ))

(add-hook 'chronometrist-before-in-functions 'my-start-project)

Reminding you to commit your changes

Another one, prompting the user if they have uncommitted changes in a git repository (assuming they use Magit) -

(autoload 'magit-anything-modified-p "magit")

(defun my-commit-prompt ()
  (if (magit-anything-modified-p)
      (if (yes-or-no-p "You have uncommitted changes. Really clock out? ")
          t
        (magit-status)
        nil)
        t))

(add-hook 'chronometrist-before-out-functions 'my-commit-prompt)

Displaying the current time interval in the activity indicator

(defun my-activity-indicator ()
  (thread-last (plist-put (chronometrist-last)
                          :stop (chronometrist-format-time-iso8601))
    list
    chronometrist-events->ts-pairs
    chronometrist-ts-pairs->durations
    (-reduce #'+)
    truncate
    chronometrist-format-time))

(setq chronometrist-activity-indicator 'my-activity-indicator)

Roadmap/Ideas

• Show details for time spent on a project when clicking on a non-zero "time spent" field (in both Chronometrist and Chronometrist-Report buffers).

chronometrist

1. Use make-thread in v26 or the emacs-async library for chronometrist-entries/chronometrist-report-entries
2. Some way to update buffers every second without making Emacs unusable. (impossible?)
3. "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. Show week counter and max weeks; don't scroll past first/last weeks
2. Highlight column of current day
3. Add support for other locale weeks/weekday names
4. Show only certain projects

chronometrist-statistics

1. Show range counter and max ranges; don't scroll past first/last time ranges
2. activity-specific - average time spent in $TIMEPERIOD, average days worked on in $TIMEPERIOD, current/longest/last streak, % of $TIMEPERIOD, % of active (tracked) time in $TIMEPERIOD, ...
3. general - most productive $TIMEPERIOD, GitHub-style work heatmap calendar, ...
4. press 1 for weekly stats, 2 for monthly, 3 for yearly

Miscellaneous

1. README - add images
2. [-] Create test timelog file and UI behaviour tests
3. Use for chronometrist-report-weekday-number-alist whatever variables like initial-frame-alist use to get that fancy Custom UI for alists.
4. Multi-timelog-file support?
5. inflatable raptor

Contributions and contact

Feedback and MRs very welcome. 🙂 doc/hacking.md contains an introduction to the codebase.

If you use Chronometrist, I'd love to hear your experiences! Get in touch with the author and other Emacs users in the Emacs channel on the Jabber network - xmpp:emacs@salas.suchat.org?join (web chat)

(For help in getting started with Jabber, click here)

License

I dream of a world where all software is liberated - transparent, trustable, and accessible for anyone to use or improve. But I don't want to use demands or threats (e.g. legal conditions) to get there.

I'd rather make a request - please do everything you can to help that dream come true.

Chronometrist is released under your choice of Unlicense or the WTFPL.

(See files UNLICENSE and WTFPL).

Thanks

wasamasa, bpalmer, aidalgol, and the rest of #emacs for their tireless help and support

jwiegley for timeclock.el, which we used as a backend in earlier versions

blandest for helping me with the name

fiete for testing and bug reports