# Lotus A to-do list built around constant reordering, not fixed buckets. ## The context Todo lists have always been a design challenge. Everyone building software tries one eventually, and almost nobody stays happy with what they ship. I wanted to take it from a different angle: no settings screen, no action buttons scattered across a toolbar, no menu bar sitting there whether you need it or not. Just a single composer at the bottom of the screen, enriched with contextual commands, carrying the entire interaction model — everything else surfaces only when you ask for it, through a long press or a typed command. The trigger was a pitch Charlie Deets posted on LinkedIn: Things 3 treats Today, Tomorrow, and Anytime as fixed buckets, but real task management is constant renegotiation — pulling something into today, pushing it back out, reshuffling mid-afternoon. Every one of those moves in Things means leaving the list, drilling into a picker, coming back. Deets' pitch pushed me to think outside the box, from a completely different perspective, toward a completely different interaction model. Lotus is what came out of that. ## What it does - A **composer** at the bottom of the screen — type and send to Anytime, or long-press send to choose Today, Tomorrow, or drill into a custom group - **Slash commands** that change meaning depending on state: with text typed, `/` is a destination picker; empty, it's the app's command palette (manage groups, theme, clear completed) - An **`@` shortcut** to jump straight to a group without leaving the keyboard - Anytime tasks aren't a dumping ground — set a due date and the item routes itself: today's date moves it to Today, tomorrow's to Tomorrow, anything later stays in Anytime. Items already filed in a custom group are left alone regardless of due date - Completed items stay struck through until midnight, or get swept early with a pull-down gesture - Full **drag-and-drop reordering**, within and across sections, backed by a fractional-ordering algorithm so reorders never require renumbering the whole list - A **stats dashboard** accessible via `/stats` — active/completed/overdue counts, a day streak, a 7-day completion bar chart, and a per-list breakdown; deliberately not persisted so the app always reopens on the list ## _ ![Lotus demo — composer, slash commands, @ shortcut, due-date routing, drag reorder, and the light/dark switch](/img/projects/lotus/lotus-demo.mp4) *Composer, slash commands, the `@` shortcut, an Anytime task routed by due date, drag-and-drop reorder, and the switch to dark mode* ## _ ![Long-press the send button to choose where a task goes — Today, Tomorrow, Anytime, or a custom group](/img/projects/lotus/mini-add-to-sheet.mp4) ![Groups drill-down — tap Groups to pick a custom destination without leaving the keyboard](/img/projects/lotus/mini-groups-drilldown.mp4) ![Slash with text typed — shows a destination picker for the current task](/img/projects/lotus/mini-slash-destination.mp4) ![Slash on an empty composer — opens the command palette: groups, theme, stats, and more](/img/projects/lotus/mini-slash-commands.mp4) ## Why it's a playground project The pitch covered maybe a third of what's in the app now. The rest came from using it daily and noticing what broke: an early swipe-to-complete gesture fought with drag-to-reorder on touch, so it got pulled and replaced with the long-press menu that's still there; a due-date rule that filed everything into Anytime turned out wrong once real dates were involved, so it got corrected to route by whether the date is today, tomorrow, or later; and the composer kept jumping off-screen when the keyboard opened on mobile Safari, fixed twice before it actually held. None of that shows up in a first working version. It shows up in the 48th PR, still fixing edge cases a daily driver keeps surfacing. ## _ ![@ shortcut — jump straight to a group picker without leaving the keyboard](/img/projects/lotus/mini-at-menu.mp4) ![Long-press a to-do — move it, set a due date, or delete, without a separate edit screen](/img/projects/lotus/mini-item-menu.mp4) ![Due date picker — set a date and the task routes itself: today goes to Today, tomorrow to Tomorrow, later stays in Anytime](/img/projects/lotus/mini-due-date.mp4) ![Theme picker — Light, Dark, or System — opened from the slash command palette](/img/projects/lotus/mini-theme.mp4) ## Dark mode Light, Dark, or System, picked from the `/theme` command and remembered across sessions. ## _ ![Main list in dark mode, with Today, Tomorrow, Anytime, and the Garden group](/img/projects/lotus/main-list-dark.png) ![Long-press Add to sheet in dark mode](/img/projects/lotus/add-to-sheet-dark.png) ![Slash command destination picker in dark mode](/img/projects/lotus/slash-menu-dark.png) ![@ command menu in dark mode](/img/projects/lotus/at-menu-dark.png) ![Long-press item menu in dark mode](/img/projects/lotus/item-menu-dark.png) ## Stats Active tasks, completed today, overdue, and a day streak — plus a 7-day completion chart and a per-list breakdown. Accessed via `/stats` and deliberately not persisted, so a reload always brings you back to the list rather than stranding you on a dashboard. ## _ ![Stats — active count, completed today, overdue, day streak, 7-day completion chart, and a per-list breakdown](/img/projects/lotus/mini-stats.mp4) ![Stats dashboard in dark mode](/img/projects/lotus/stats-dark.png) ## The result One composer, no buttons. Slash commands and the @ shortcut cover what a typical to-do app spreads across menus, toggles, and settings screens. Pulling a task into Today, pushing it to Tomorrow, parking it in Anytime, or filing it into a custom group all happens from the list itself. That's the renegotiation Deets described, without the round trip through a picker.