Getting Started
To start using Quest you don't necessarily need any configuration. That is, if all you need is a simple CLI to interface with your todo.txt without any special features.
In most cases you will want a config though. Since there is probably a bit of a learning curve for this, Quest comes with a few presets. Therefore, after installing Quest the first thing you will want to do is to choose your preset by running:
If you don't follow a particular methodology (like GTD) it is recommended to choose extended todo.txt. This preset comes with all advanced features enabled (like recurrent tasks), but other than that it is pretty minimal.Adding/Listing/Completing/Editing tasks
Adding a new task can be done by using the add command.
Every remaining argument will be considered part of the task description.
To list tasks, simply run quest without any arguments.
You can also add keywords to search for, quest -- dish will only list
tasks containing the substring "dish".
To complete a task you can use the complete command, which takes a list
of selectors (e.g. words to search for) as well.
If you know you want to complete a task that contains the word "dish" simply
run this.
To edit a task in your editor you'll want to use the edit command.
Updating Projects/Contexts/Tags
Words in a task description that are prefixed by an @ symbol are considered contexts.
If a word is prefixed by a + Symbol it is considered a project.
The set and unset commands are used to manage these types of metadata.
For example to add the task on line 3 to the project foo, one would run:
Tags are key-value pairs that carry metadata for the task. Commonly this is used to carry due dates:
or to make a task recurrent:Where to go from here
With these few commands you can probably get started already. At some point you will want to look into how to define views for which you will need at least a basic understanding of the query language. For convenience you might also want to look into tag expansions.