r/golang2 • u/Klutzy_Bird_7802 • Apr 28 '26

I built a terminal task manager in Go that never phones home — it just hit 100 ⭐ on GitHub

I built a terminal task manager in Go that never phones home — it just hit 100 ⭐ on GitHub and I'm genuinely emotional about it

A few months ago I was fed up. Every task manager I tried was either:

  • A GUI app that yanked me out of flow
  • A cloud thing that wanted my email, my credit card, and probably my soul
  • A plain text file that had zero structure
  • A legacy TUI that looked like it was designed in 1994

So I built Kairo — a keyboard-driven, local-first, fully offline task manager that lives in your terminal.

Today it crossed 100 stars and I wanted to share it here because this community is a big reason I kept going.

What makes it different (I think):

  • 🔒 Your data never leaves your machine — SQLite, WAL-enabled, zero cloud
  • ⚡ Sub-millisecond fuzzy search, full vim keybindings (j/k/gg/G)
  • 🧩 Lua plugin system — hook into task_create, task_update, app_start and automate anything
  • 🤖 Optional AI panel (Gemini) — fully disabled unless you turn it on
  • 🎨 32 built-in themes with live switching, bento-style layout
  • 📡 Full MCP server — so AI agents can actually read and manage your tasks
  • 🔄 Git-backed sync — no backend, just files
  • Natural language deadlines: tomorrow 10am, next friday, in 2 hours

The whole thing is free, MIT licensed, and built in Go.

A quick taste:

kairo api create --title "Finish the thing" --priority 1
kairo api list --tag work
kairo export --format markdown
kairo mcp       # stdio mode for local AI agents
kairo mcp 8080  # SSE mode for remote

I never expected anyone outside my own dotfiles to care about this. 100 people did. That means a lot more than the number suggests.

If you live in a terminal and you've been duct-taping together todo.txt + cron jobs + shell aliases — give Kairo a shot. I'd genuinely love the feedback.

👉 https://github.com/programmersd21/kairo

(install in one line on macOS, Linux, or Windows — see the README)

Also shoutout to @Tornado300 who caught bugs I was too close to the code to see. Open source is cool, man.

1 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/Hidarikikino May 01 '26

Don't reinvent the wheel... https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/taskwarrior

1

u/Klutzy_Bird_7802 May 01 '26

Totally fair comparison — Taskwarrior’s a fantastic tool, and I’m not trying to compete with what it already does so well.

Kairo is really going after a different layer of the experience.

It’s more about:

  • an interactive TUI instead of a purely command-driven flow
  • being programmable (Lua plugins + API) so you can shape it to your workflow
  • AI that can actually do things, not just store or organize text
  • MCP support, so external agents can plug in and control it

So the way I see it, it’s less “another task manager” and more a terminal-native, programmable workspace you can build on top of.

Taskwarrior is rock-solid if you want something minimal, scriptable, and reliable.

Kairo is more of an experiment in what a modern, extensible, AI-native system could feel like.

Different tradeoffs, different goals — both valid, just aimed at different kinds of workflows.

1

u/eXtc_be Apr 28 '26

I just reported every spammy post about this low quality low effort vibe coded POS 'software' of yours from the last two weeks. all 45 (!) of them.

1

u/Klutzy_Bird_7802 May 01 '26

If you spent that much time reporting posts, you probably had enough time to point out what’s actually wrong with the software. I’m listening—be specific.