I Built a Plain-Text Personal Productivity CLI in Rust — and It Lives in Your Terminal Forever

If you've ever searched different from Notion, grown tired of syncing Todoist with your calendar, or just wanted to jot something down without opening a browser tab — this one's for you.

Meet mps (pronounced just like the letters). Actually mps in this context stands for MonoPsyches — "a single mind." The idea is simple: one place for everything your mind is carrying, like one consciousness holding everything together. Not five apps. With just you, a terminal, and a folder of text files.

It's a plain-text, single-binary CLI for journaling your day: tasks, notes, reminders, work logs, even running notes about people you collaborate with. Everything lives in simple .mps files you can read in any text editor, version-control with git, and keep across places.

cargo install mps-rs

That's it. One command, No subscriptions.

The Story

I've been keeping a daily text file for years. Tasks for the day. Notes from meetings. Reminders to myself. A quick log of what I actually worked on. It started as a Ruby script, grew into a gem I called mps, and eventually I rewrote it in Rust because I wanted a single, fast binary I could drop on any machine and have working in seconds.

The Rust version (mps-rs) is fully backward-compatible with every file I ever wrote with the Ruby version. Not a single file needed to change.

What It Does

Your day, one command at a time

mps                                          # open today's file in $EDITOR
mps list                                     # see what's on your plate
mps list --since monday                      # catch up on the week

Append without opening a file

mps append task "Review the PR" --tags work,backend
mps append note "The edge case only appears under load"
mps append reminder "Team standup" --at 3pm
mps append log "Deep-work session" --start-time 09:00 --end-time 11:30

Or with the short aliases from your config (t → task, a → append):

mps a t "Fix the auth bug" --tags work

Mark things done

mps done task-1

Edit or delete a specific entry

mps edit note-2           # opens just that element's body in $EDITOR
mps delete task-3 --yes   # gone, no file dancing required

Search across your entire archive

mps search "auth"
mps search "design" --since "last week" --type note

Stats and tag charts

mps stats --since monday   # element counts + total log time
mps tags --all             # tag frequency bar chart

Export to JSON or CSV

mps export --format csv --since "20260501" > may.csv

The File Format

This is the whole thing. No binary blobs, no database:

@task[work, backend, status: open]{
  Review the PR
}

@note{
  The auth token expiry edge case only appears under concurrent load.
  Worth a follow-up spike.
}

@reminder[at: 3pm]{
  Team standup
}

@log[work, start: 09:00, end: 11:30]{
  Deep-work session — rewrote the parser
}

@character[name: Dr. Alice, mentor, trusted]{
  Explained the layered caching approach in detail today.
  Would consult again for architecture decisions.
}

Files are named YYYYMMDD.<epoch>.mps and stored in ~/.mps/mps/. You can open any of them directly in your editor, grep through them, pipe them — they're just text.

Five Element Types

The character type is my personal favourite. Instead of scattered CRM notes, I keep one long evolving entry per person. mps list --name "Dr. Alice" shows me everything I've ever noted about our interactions.

Desktop Notifications (Linux)

If you're on Linux and have notify-send, mps can fire desktop alerts when a reminder is due:

mps notify --dry-run    # see what would fire, no side effects
mps daemon install      # set up a systemd user timer that checks every minute

Every morning at 9am (configurable), you can get a briefing of all open tasks — including anything overdue from the past week.

Sync Across Devices

mps autogit   # git add + commit + pull + push

Because the storage directory is a plain git repo, syncing is a one-liner. There's also a .mps.meta sidecar (git-tracked) for cross-device config like notification settings and tag lists, and a .mps.local file (gitignored) for per-machine state like notification history. They stay out of each other's way automatically.

Natural Date Language

Dates work the way you'd say them out loud:

mps list --since monday
mps open yesterday
mps search "deploy" --since "last week"
mps open "3 days ago"
mps open "last friday"
mps export --since "20260501"

Configuration

Drop this in ~/.mps_config.yaml (auto-created on first run):

storage_dir: /home/you/.mps/mps
default_command: list

type_aliases:
  t: task
  n: note
  r: reminder
  l: log

command_aliases:
  a: append
  "+": append
  s: search

notify:
  enabled: true
  task_notify_at: "9am"
  window_minutes: 5
  overdue_days: 7

Now mps + t "Ship the feature" just works.

The Technical Bits (for the curious)

• Written in Rust, single binary, no runtime dependencies
• clap for the CLI, chrono for dates, regex + serde + thiserror for the rest
• 559 unit and integration tests
• GitHub Actions CI: test on stable + beta Rust, clippy, rustfmt
• Fully backward-compatible with the original Ruby gem's file format and YAML config (including Ruby symbol-key YAML)
• Atomic file writes throughout — a crash during mps edit never corrupts your data

Get It

# Install from crates.io
cargo install mps-rs

# Or from source
git clone https://github.com/mash-97/mps-rs
cd mps-rs
cargo install --path .

The binary is called mps.

• GitHub: https://github.com/mash-97/mps-rs
• Crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/mps-rs

Contributing

The project is early and there's plenty of room to make it better. If you find a bug, open an issue. If you have an idea, open an issue and let's talk. PRs are welcome — there's a CONTRIBUTING.md with setup instructions and a PR checklist.

Good first places to poke around: tests/fixtures/ for adding new test coverage, and src/commands/ if you want to follow how a command is wired end-to-end.

If you've ever wished your productivity system was just a folder of text files you could grep — this might be it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.