Obsidian Task Center

简体中文 / English

Task Center is an Obsidian plugin that adds a daily/weekly/monthly task board, parent-child task rendering, natural-language Quick Add, mobile gestures, and an AI-friendly CLI on top of Obsidian Tasks markdown.

It does not create a new database or task format. Your source of truth stays in markdown:

- [ ] Plan the launch #work ⏳ 2026-05-15 📅 2026-05-20 [estimate:: 90m]
    - [ ] Draft release notes [estimate:: 30m]
- [x] Ship the fix ✅ 2026-04-28 [actual:: 45m]
- [-] Retired idea ❌ 2026-04-28

Why Task Center

Obsidian Tasks owns the task syntax and query model. Task Center keeps that foundation and adds the working surfaces that are awkward to build in a note:

Need	Task Center adds
Plan the week	A full-tab board with Today, Week, Month, Completed, and Unscheduled views
Move work around	Drag tasks between dates, nest under another task, or abandon without deleting markdown
Handle task trees	Recursive parent-child cards with inherited schedule/status semantics
Capture quickly	Spotlight-style Quick Add with English and Chinese date parsing
Review estimates	Estimate vs actual summaries via inline fields such as [estimate::] and [actual::]
Use mobile	Phone layout, long-press menus, swipe actions, and keyboard-safe Quick Add
Let an AI agent help	Stable obsidian task-center:* CLI verbs with greppable output

Install

Task Center is not yet listed in Obsidian's Community Plugins browser. Until it is, install it with BRAT so releases and updates come from GitHub.

Prerequisites

1. Install and enable Obsidian Tasks. Task Center reads and writes Tasks-compatible markdown and expects the Tasks plugin to remain the data-layer companion.
2. Enable Obsidian's built-in Daily Notes core plugin and set its "New file location". Quick Add writes new tasks to today's Daily Note and refuses to fall back to an inbox when Daily Notes is missing or misconfigured.

Install with BRAT

1. In Obsidian, open Settings -> Community plugins.

2. Turn off Restricted Mode if Obsidian asks you to.

3. Click Browse, search for BRAT, install Obsidian42 - BRAT, and enable it.

4. Open Settings -> BRAT.

5. Choose Add Beta Plugin.

6. Paste this repository URL:

   https://github.com/CorrectRoadH/obsidian-task-center
   

7. Let BRAT install the latest release.

8. Return to Settings -> Community plugins and enable Task Center.

Mobile install

Task Center is mobile-capable (isDesktopOnly: false). Install it on desktop with BRAT, sync plugins with Obsidian Sync, then enable Task Center in Obsidian Mobile.

Quick Start

1. Write or keep using normal Tasks-style checkboxes in any markdown file.

2. Add schedule, deadline, estimate, and actual-time metadata only when useful:

   - [ ] Review PR #work ⏳ today [estimate:: 30m]
   - [ ] Renew passport 📅 2026-05-30
   

3. Open Task Center from the ribbon icon, command palette, or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+T.

4. Use Quick Add with Ctrl/Cmd+T inside the board:

   Review beta feedback #work tomorrow [estimate:: 25m]
   处理发布清单 #3象限 周六 [estimate:: 45m]
   

Natural-language dates such as today, tomorrow, 今天, and 周六 are resolved to ISO dates before writing markdown.

Views

• Today: overdue, scheduled-today, and unscheduled-recommendation groups with quick actions.
• Week: seven columns, today highlighted, with per-day task counts and estimate totals.
• Month: calendar grid with date drop zones.
• Completed: review timeline grouped by week with estimate-vs-actual summaries.
• Unscheduled: task pool sorted by deadline and creation order.

Drag a card to a date to change ⏳. Drop it onto another card to nest it. Drop it on the abandon target to mark it [-] ❌ instead of deleting the source line.

Syntax

Task Center preserves Obsidian Tasks metadata such as ⏳, 📅, 🛫, ➕, and ✅, and uses [-] ❌ YYYY-MM-DD for abandoned tasks.

Estimate and actual-time summaries use inline fields such as [estimate:: 90m], [estimate:: 1h30m], and [actual:: 75m]. Tags and unknown inline fields are preserved byte-for-byte.

CLI

Task Center registers verbs with Obsidian's native CLI. There is no separate wrapper script.

obsidian task-center
obsidian task-center:list scheduled=today
obsidian task-center:list scheduled=unscheduled tag='#work'
obsidian task-center:show ref=Tasks/Inbox.md:L42
obsidian task-center:add text="Review launch checklist" tag='#work' scheduled=2026-05-15
obsidian task-center:schedule ref=Tasks/Inbox.md:L42 date=2026-05-16
obsidian task-center:done ref=Tasks/Inbox.md:L42 at=2026-04-28
obsidian task-center:review days=7
obsidian task-center:review days=7 format=json
obsidian task-center:query-list
obsidian task-center:query-run id=preset-today view=week
obsidian task-center:query-set-default id=preset-week

CLI output is greppable and agent-friendly: list rows start with stable ids, writes are idempotent, mutations print before / after lines, and Query Tab commands can list, run, create, update, rename, copy, hide, delete, and set defaults by stable id.

To install the companion AI skill:

npx skills add CorrectRoadH/obsidian-task-center

Crabbox

This repository includes repo-local Crabbox onboarding for remote verification on Blacksmith Testboxes.

crabbox warmup
crabbox run -- pnpm run typecheck
crabbox run -- pnpm run test:unit
crabbox run -- pnpm run test:e2e

The default repo config lives in .crabbox.yaml and points at .github/workflows/blacksmith-testbox.yml. If your Blacksmith account needs an explicit org, export CRABBOX_BLACKSMITH_ORG before crabbox warmup.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it controls
Default view	Week	Which tab opens first
Week starts on	Monday	Week and calendar boundaries
Open Task Center on startup	Off	Whether the board opens with the vault
Stamp created date	On	Whether new tasks get ➕ YYYY-MM-DD
Force mobile layout	Off	Use the phone layout on wider screens

License

MIT.