Show HN: Godspeed is a fast, 100% keyboard oriented todo app for Mac (godspeedapp.com)
Godspeed has everything you expect in a todo manager like shared lists, labels, smart lists, boolean search operators, and cloud sync. If you're already a user of an app like Todoist or OmniFocus you should be able find everything you need in Godspeed.
I think the most appealing thing to most HN users would be the keyboard orientation. Literally every single action in Godspeed is doable from your keyboard. I'm so serious about this that I built "hardcore mode" to completely disable the mouse - this both helps you break the habit of reaching for your mouse, and keeps us honest about 100% hotkey support.
You can fully customize the hotkeys, but if you're into Vim or Emacs you'll feel right at home by default.
We've got a 2 week free trial with no limitations, and then offer subscription or one-time purchase options.
Thanks for checking out Godspeed, I'd love to hear your feedback!
235 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadIt actually matters to me, latency and ease of use are #1 reasons I avoid Jira and Asana.
(Asana is easy to use, but damn if it’s slow).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I guess it’s a non-goal, but do you envision a future where you would integrate with those solutions? Of course any integration would hopefully sync lazily in the background instead of blocking the render…
Integrations: Todoist ClickUp Trello Asana Notion Jira GitHub Gmail Outlook Slack
Also, they say it does timeboxing, but it's not evident they understand the notion of prioritization through pre scheduled and empty timeboxes, that tasks fill by category match, then do not overfill but spill to the next available timebox of that same category, allowing you to meta-manage your prioritization by category of task vs. amount of recurring timeboxes as a proportion of your week, rather than by task.
EDIT/ADD:
Upon review of the user manual, they seem to think "timeboxing" is the alternative to "playlisting", meaning, do you book actual time on your calendar for a task, versus, do you burn through a list of tasks when you are in task mode.
They seem to miss that timeboxing is the opposite of calendaring particular tasks, it's a third way.
If you have calendaring tasks, and playlisting tasks, timeboxing is calendaring big chunky timeboxes (not tasks) for "headspace" around sets of tasks, then playlisting the matching subset of tasks within that timebox.
There seems to be a concept of channels (#hashtags) and an ability to auto-schedule within channels, and an ability to have per channel schedules. Depending how implemented, that combination of features might allow actual timeboxing, which, incidentally, could line up well with the legitimate timeboxing offered by SavvyCal, my favorite "meet with me at a time that works for you (and me)" tool.
You should not, ever, be "dragging a task to the calendar" in timeboxing. The task should be in a class that you have a timebox for (their channels notion) and if you have unclassified tasks, you can playlist them in a "random tasks" designated timebox. To force a task to be in the next available timebox for that class, you prioritize the playlist.
Unfortunately, as someone was curious about, this doesn't support Linear, though perhaps you could do it transitively through, say, GitHub.
Every morning I have a routine of selecting my tasks from Jira. During the day, I just try to keep Jira up-to-date. And then at the end of the day, I ensure Jira is up-to-date with my progress.
I've tried multiple times to automate them, but the automation ends up with more costs than benefits.
Congrats
$150 once for an app to organize your work and personal life is a screaming bargain.
Personally I pay less than 1/2 the sub rate they're charging for TickTick Premium, and love it. That's not to say I wouldn't pay double for what it gains me (I definitely would), but given that TickTick is a viable option - I don't need to.
Side note: although TickTick supports notes, I don't use them. I dig UpNote, another not-super-well-known but simple, cross-platform, and inexpensive tool. It's basically the feature-set I wished Evernote stopped at (super subjective, maybe too simple for most here).
With todo apps, I don't really expect the same sort of constant on-slaught of features like I do from other things. I expect it to continue to work and get out of the way. I expect the price to reflect the fact there was a lot of upfront work to get it "done" to a level where I can just use it.
[0] https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/buy/
Even the Sublime users have lots of options already. Sublime is ALSO a very capable text editor and $100.
A CLI app is not something I would want to use for something I touch every 30minutes, every day, from many devices. But I do use vim for text editing.
Emacs users have Org Mode and MobileOrg and can store the sync data somewhere they have full control over.
Specific things I'm looking for in a Todo manager:
1. iPhone <=> Mac apps and syncing
2. Hotkeys + Speed
3. Shared lists (you don't even mention this until I get into Guides, but I love it)
4. Smart lists
5. Nesting
6. Pasting images
7. Projects + subtasks
8. An inbox
9. Snoozing to the future
10. Focus mode (gets rid of everything else EXCEPT for the current task... really nice as a reminder when I start a task, hop into a meeting, and flip back to the todo list to see what I'm meant to be working on and it's staring me in the face vs. seeing a long list of items). Don't think you support this - first saw it in Amazing Marvin.
Concerns:
1. How painful will it be to import from Things?
2. What if the app goes away? I don't want to lose my stuff or switch again, it's a pain. How big is your company? Are you a going concern with real customers or is this a side project that will fall by the wayside?
3. I do love not paying a subscription for Things. I like the $150 one-off fee for 18m. Would consider that.
Regardless, going to play with it today. Seems very promising!
Now I use vanilla Obsidian with checkboxes - super simple, and I own the file.
There's no snoozing though - you have to cut-paste a task into a different todo list if you want to move it.
I'm sure there's also a plugin that would make it more org-mode-ish.
I wrote a template for my Daily Note which includes a Tasks section. Underneath the list of tasks for the day, I use a Dataview to create a collapsable "Backlog" section, which selects all uncompleted tasks from my Daily Notes folder with a created time before the current file. It ends up looking something like:
The cool part about this, aside from being able to show/hide the Backlog, is you can mark a task as done from the Backlog section, and it will update the original Daily Note file, and remove it from the Backlog section.Here's the Dataview query I'm using:
Shame that it only nets you 18 months, and seemingly no support guarantee. I'm also curious how limitless bug fixes for older versions is going to work out. "Godspeed will never stop working" feels like a bold claim to make given enough time in "never." I've been using Things for 6 years now.
Godspeed looks interesting enough vs Things to kick the tires b/c:
1. Speed of date picking and moving todos (choosing dates in Things is a mouse operation and I do it multiple times a day. It's 2024 guys, we don't need calendar pickers when we have command palettes)
2. Image support (super annoying I can't include files in Things. Again... 2024, come on)
3. Sharing lists (can't do in Things which doesn't respect that todos are often collaborative / shared)
> choosing dates in Things is a mouse operation
Not so! Cmd-Shift-D: https://imgur.com/a/kfa6KZj
Also Concern #3, is there a subscription for things? o.O
The easier I make it on myself the better.
At work, after trying seemingly everything, I think I hit my stride with Obsidian. I have a plugin to show a calendar that works with the daily notes. I setup a template for that with a todo heading and a notes heading. I treat that kind of like a bullet journal. Each day I move over the stuff that wasn’t finished from the last day. The notes section is to give me a scratch pad for stuff that I only need that day. Other notes go to their own page to easily find later (with none of that zettlekasten nonsense). If I have a lot in my mind at the end of the day, especially on a Friday or before vacation, I’ll fill out the daily note for the day I plan to be back in the office, so I can remember where I left off. I can also open up a future daily note to add an item if I need to follow up on something on a certain day. For normal meetings I use Outlook, because I have to.
At home, the above system doesn’t work so well, because I have a lot less going on. I don’t need something that requires daily interaction like that. I have been writing up some ideas for an app I plan to write that will hopefully solve this problem for me. Time will tell how that plays out. In the meantime I’m using Apple Reminders and Calendar in a pretty basic form.
I write a list of todos, check them off as I go, then rewrite that list once the page is full or after a few days - leaving off those that are done. I've found it works better than any app (and I have tried many).
> 10. Focus mode
You're right, this is the one we don't support. But we've gotten requests for it, including from my cofounder, so its coming!
> 1. How painful will it be to import from Things?
I'm not sure if Things lets you export tasks, but if they do I'm more than happy to run a one-time custom import for you (or any other Things user). There's also the simpler way, which is copying a bunch of tasks to your clipboard and hitting ⌘+Shift+V in Godspeed to paste tasks from clipboard. It'll respect indentation and bullet characters.
> 2. What if the app goes away? I don't want to lose my stuff or switch again, it's a pain. How big is your company? Are you a going concern with real customers or is this a side project that will fall by the wayside?
Important question, thank you for asking it. First, if the app goes away, you're able to export your data from Godspeed. Currently it exports as JSON, but we're going to add other export formats in the future (as well as attachment exporting, which we don't currently support - though all your attachments are stored in a particular folder in ~/Library).
We're small right now, just a few people. But this app is pretty cheap to run and we use it every day (I don't want to brag, but I'm currently at the top of the charts for # of todos with 22,000 :p). So for what its worth, we intend to be around for a long time.
Thanks so much for the feedback and for checking it out! Happy to answer more questions, either here or daniel@godspeedapp.com
The local Things database is just a sqlite database. https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/2803570/
It is extremely minimal and elegant, does everything that you're looking for (on first glance), and is completely free. Not to be hyperbolic but the interface is ingenious in it's power and simplicity. Give it a shot.
[0]: https://workflowy.com/basics/
It's not completely free. [0] A set of features are available free. The complete set of features runs > $4/month, depending on whether you pay monthly or yearly.
[0] https://workflowy.com/pricing/
I use the app for work and personal note taking, todo lists, etc. and have not run into any limitations of the free plan in the last five years of daily usage.
It's an online service, isn't it? Not a local application.
https://workflowy.com/download/
There are a few reasons we're not using iCloud: 1. We eventually intend to support other platforms, like Windows and the web. 2. Though they're admittedly rare, we've heard some iCloud horror stories. @DanielDe (OP) lost some files using iCloud Drive, so it's hard for us to trust it. 3. We wanted much tighter control over syncing to provide the particular experience we were aiming for. Things like live cursors for shared lists, and the way our offline experience works, are tightly tied into our sync engine.
It is not necessarily a deal breaker, one can always just export/backup regularly.
If there's a taskpaper or other simple text-based import format, I'd switch in a second.
Edit: looking closer, you're totally going for OF specifically! Same price point, and I think nearly-feature matched. Good job!
I'm also happy to do a custom, one-off import if you can get me any kind of machine readable file.
An important question: can we sync it with our own method (e.g. Dropbox or SyncThing or whatever) or is there a hardcoded sync to the company's Cloud?
It's a matter of privacy and freedom to move the data as we see fit.
For what its worth, all of your data is stored locally in a sqlite DB. You shouldn't edit this DB or syncing may not work, but you should feel free to read from it if you'd like ~/Library/Godspeed/godspeed-db.sqlite
However, there are a couple options you could use: 1. Use nested tasks for this purpose. If task B is nested beneath task A, then B is a dependency of A. Godspeed supports infinite nesting (okay, okay - MAX_INT levels of nesting) 2. You could use labels and smart lists. Give blocked tasks a "Blocked" label and create a smart list that filters out any tasks that are blocked.
Nitpicks, but some of the ways in which it doesn't behave like a mac app I don't like. I don't like the non-native looking font. The sidebar isn't collapsible or resizable like a mac app, but I guess you could add an editor-style shortcut to toggle that. If you have a mouse plugged in you get scroll bars everywhere. It seems to maintain its own undo/redo stack? The shortcuts for undo/redo work but the menu commands for them won't.
Edit: typos
The sidebars can be collapsed with ⌘+; and ⌘+', though we also intend to make them fully resizable soon too!
You're right about the undo/redo stack, we need to improve its integration with the system so those work properly.
Thanks so much for this feedback! Keep it coming!
I'm just saying I think the buy to own price is an order of magnitude too high relative to other significantly more complicated pieces of software.
If it's more than a todo app, OmniFocus sets a price point: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/
Yep, $150. So not scale or age, cuz it is the granddaddy gold standard.
At the same time, there are apps like Mindkit [0], which seem to do similar things as this, but with more features, but which cost 3000 JPY(20 USD) lifetime.
Personally, the only time I can justify 150 USD for a purchase of an app is when it has as many features or is as impactful as Word/Excel/Powerpoint combined.
No disrespect to the people who made it, good luck with the app!
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mindkit-keep-things-organized/...
If the app enables you to do that then $150 to actually keep on top of tasks you need to do is an amazing bargain.
Most of them provide abstraction layers that handle low-level input events, including keyboard input, with a consistent API across platforms. They also adhere to established standards like ISO/IEC 9995 for keyboard layouts and XKB for X Window Systems.
Additionally, platforms often provide dedicated input method libraries (e.g., IBus on Linux, TSF on Windows) that these frameworks can leverage to handle different keyboard layouts and input methods seamlessly.
Not to mention the focus on localization and internationalization (L10n and I18n) in modern software development practices, which includes support for different locales, character encodings, and input methods out of the box.
While there may be some edge cases or platform-specific quirks to consider, the challenges of handling different keyboard layouts are generally well-understood and addressed by the frameworks and their active communities.
Is this normal for SaaS?
In this case, you'd pay $150 for an 18-month window of updates, or $144 for two years of updates (or, if you like, $72*1.5 for the same 18-month window, assuming you're going to pay another $150 at month 19 for something interesting.)
Contrast that with Agenda, which is $35 to buy with 12 month of updates, or about $100 for a life-time of updates. The tradeoff is more straightforward as you're just deciding whether to bet on more than three years of features.
Or contrast with OmniFocus which is $150 for the major version, which typically is on a 4-5 year cicle, or $5/mo. In that case you're just betting that you'll use the current major version more than 2.5 years.
(I'm ignoring cashflow discount; you get the idea.)
(The app itself is fun and fast to use, and I'm not complaining or demanding special treatment. I'm just interested in how these things are priced.)
Agreed! That's a big part of what motivated us to build Godspeed.
> Perhaps some testimonials from organisations/teams that have used it would be a better thing to lead with than a strange technical statement which most users won't understand. I'm a fairly technical sort of guy myself and I don't exactly know off the top of my head what 50ms latency feels like or how it compares to other note taking software.
Appreciate that feedback! Today is our 1.0 launch, we'll definitely add some testimonials in the coming weeks.
For what it's worth, a response time of 100ms is perceived as instantaneous [0].
[0] https://www.pubnub.com/blog/how-fast-is-realtime-human-perce...
That's not true. From the source you cited:
> Increasing latency above 13 ms has an increasingly negative impact on human performance for a given task. While imperceptible at first, added latency continues to degrade a human’s processing ability until approaching 75 to 100 ms. Here we become very conscious that input has become too slow
The 100ms figure was in regard to conversational interactions with a computer.
"I found some results on the web. I can show them to you again if you ask from your iPhone."
Strongly in the pen and paper camp, myself.
Pen and paper worked great for me when I did everything at a desk (or carried a notebook with me) and I was always doing deep focus work. I went digital when I started being more mobile in my work and I had a lot of contexts where I needed to jot quick TODOs as I thought of them. Also, it's difficult to collaborate with my wife using paper.
The inbox mechanic for tasks works great, because I don't need to add all my task metadata right away. I can also annotate projects and contexts so I can say "what are my TODOs when I'm at home" or "what are my TODOs related to a person on my team". Now that I'm tracking over 20 things, it's necessary to stay organized