Chronologicon

v4.60 — 181030

A minimal time tracker, now rewritten for the command line. Chronologicon records your work sessions and displays graphs based on your projects.

Install: $ pip install chronologicon

 

Logs

Chronologicon stores work sessions as logs. Each log has a named discipline and project, along with an optional note. The project should be self-explanatory; the discipline refers to the general type of work. I separate mine into visual, code, and research, but you should use whichever categories feel most suited to your workflow.

The note is optional, but may be useful to you for recording the specific task you're working on.

A list of all logs is saved in logs.json, in Chronologicon's save directory. This file can (and should) be backed up with the $ chron -b command.

stat.json contains a more lightweight summary of these log data, which is used to display the graphs. It's overwritten every time you complete a log.

Commands

$ chron with no arguments will run preflight checks. This will create any mission-critical files which are currently missing. If everything is OK, it returns nothing.

-s <args>   Start a new log timer
-x          Complete the current log
-v <args>   View stats & graphs
-b          Backup the log data file
-d <dir>    Change the save directory
--cancel    Abort the current entry

The first time you use Chronologicon, you'll need to specify a save directory with the -d argument.

Usage

$ chron -d ~/Documents/Chron Change the save directory to a folder on your computer.

$ chron -s 'discipline' 'project' 'note' Create a new log with discipline, project, and (optionally) a note.

$ chron -x Stop tracking and save the current log.

Combinations

Because the commands Chronologicon takes are all technically optional arguments, you can use them in combination with each other:

$ chron -x -s <args> will stop the current log and start a new one with the specified discipline and project.

$ chron -x -v will stop the current log and then display statistics.

I haven't tested every combination, so use them at your own risk (and make regular backups!)

Extra

$ chron -v verbose will return additional projects (every project with a graph width of 1 character or more).

$ chron -v uniform will make all project graphs full-width.

Using uniform and verbose in combination will display all projects.

Chron stores in-progress logs in a temporary file in its install directory, meaning you can safely exit all terminal windows, restart your computer, and install updates while logging. I don't recommend relying on this feature, but I hope it can provide some peace of mind.

— R