SMF·STRUCTURED
Can a prompt replace Structured?
Tasks & to-dos — personal tasks, routines and daily planning
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Structured's whole idea is that a task list hides how much you have committed to, and a timeline does not. Give every task a duration, lay them on a day axis, and the overcommitment is visible before the day starts rather than at six in the evening. That is a small build with a real behavioural effect, and there is nothing behind it that needs a service. What you lose is that Structured is an iPhone app, and a day plan you cannot see on your phone is a plan you do not follow.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on31.07.2026Build a day planner where tasks have durations and are laid out on a visual timeline.
Tasks: title, notes, duration in minutes (required — a task without a duration cannot be placed, and that constraint is the point), an optional fixed start time, a category with a colour, and an optional icon. Subtasks that roll their durations up into the parent.
The timeline, which is the product. A vertical day axis from a configurable start to end hour. Blocks are placed in sequence, each occupying its duration. Fixed-time items — a meeting, a school run — are anchored and cannot be pushed; flexible items flow around them.
The arithmetic that has to be visible at all times:
- Total planned time versus available time between the start and end hours, as a number and as a bar.
- Overflow, shown explicitly: when the plan exceeds the day, render the overflowing blocks below the end-of-day line rather than compressing them or scrolling them out of sight. Seeing three tasks sitting past midnight is the feature.
- Slack: the unallocated time between the last block and the end of the day.
Dragging a block later pushes the ones after it and updates all three numbers live. Never silently resize a task to make a plan fit.
Recurring tasks, with tests: daily, every N days, weekdays, weekly on chosen days, monthly by date, monthly by nth weekday. Two completion modes — next occurrence from the scheduled date, and from the completion date — because getting the second wrong is what makes recurring chores drift.
Routines: a named sequence of tasks with durations that can be dropped onto the timeline as one block — a morning routine, a shutdown routine. Editing the routine updates future placements, not past ones.
Progress during the day: a now-line that moves, and a visual indication of whether you are ahead or behind the plan, computed from completed tasks against elapsed time. Rescheduling the rest of the day from the now-line is one action.
Review: at the end of the day, planned versus actual duration per task, and a running record of your estimation error by category. Learning that you consistently underestimate writing by 60 percent is the most useful thing this data produces.
Notifications: desktop notification at a block's start and at a configurable interval before, honest in the README that this only works while the application is running.
Storage: SQLite, with JSON export and automatic backups.
Out of scope: mobile apps, sync of any kind, calendar integration, shared or assigned tasks, and any AI feature.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 the iPhone and iPad apps and their home-screen widgets
- B.2 sync across devices
- B.3 calendar integration showing meetings on the same timeline
- B.4 notifications that arrive when a block starts
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: cross-device reliability and workflow polish
Because a day plan is consulted from a pocket, all day. Three dollars a month for a phone app that puts today's timeline on the lock screen is doing something a laptop application structurally cannot.
Questions
Can I import my Structured tasks?
Structured exports as JSON including durations and recurrence, and the common fields map across. Recurrence rules need checking after import because the two apps express them differently, and durations are the field worth verifying since everything here depends on them.
Why require a duration on every task?
Because a task without one cannot be placed, and a plan that does not add up is exactly the problem this tool exists to solve. Making it required is what forces the estimate, and the end-of-day review is what slowly makes those estimates honest.
What does it cost to run?
Nothing. A local SQLite file, no server, no account. It exists on exactly one machine, which is also the main thing wrong with it.
What is the one thing that does not survive the rebuild?
Being on your phone. A day timeline earns its keep by being glanced at between things, and Structured's widget puts it on the lock screen. A desktop application means checking the plan only when you are already at the desk, which is when you least need it.
Related tools
Receipt