whatnow
Executive function for the rest of us.
whatnow is a day planner for ADHD brains. Rather than an hourly schedule, it holds your day loosely: what you must do, what you should do, and what you could do if there's room. Dump everything on your plate in whatever words come out. An LLM sorts it into tasks and events, notices how you feel about them, and plans a day that fits your energy. When you're stuck, ask it what now?
It runs locally: one Go binary with a web UI and a terminal UI, and your data in SQLite on your machine. You bring your own model API key.
!Today: the day strip, tasks in must, should, and could tiers, and the chat pane
For a feel of a whole day, from the morning brain dump to the wrap-up, read demo.md.
What it does
- Good morning: reconcile yesterday's leftovers, dump what's on your mind, say how much you've
- What now?: one pick for right now, with a reason. Pass on it and say why, and it picks again.
- Chat: "push the dentist to Thursday", "break this report into tiny steps". The assistant acts
- Pace: five levels, from running on fumes to go hard. Change it any time and the plan
- Nudges: before events, when they end, and as the day winds down, in the web UI.
- Wrap up: see what you got done, triage what's left, and leave a note for tomorrow.
- Integrations: pull today's meetings from Google Calendar (by each calendar's secret iCal
whatnow jira setup once on a Mac that can reach it (install with
brew install jameynakama/tap/whatnow). After that, whatnow jira push sends your search and the
next pull offers it.
You can shape it in settings. Assistant style sets its voice ("playful and friendly, with the odd koan"). About me tells the planner how you work ("my focus peaks before lunch", "meetings drain me"). Theme swaps the look: the default sticker style, plain 90s, Neon Nights, Terminal, Paper, or Vaporwave.
A day, in pictures
All of these come from one made-up Thursday run against a live model, with the About me above set to "focus peaks before lunch, cooked after 3pm, meetings drain me".
| | | |---|---| | !The morning brain dump Good morning: dump it all, messy is fine. | !The morning plan in three tiers The plan: the dreaded report goes first, while focus is high. | | !A what-now pick with its reason What now? 11 minutes before standup, so not the report. | !Chat breaking the report into tasks Chat: break the report into steps, then add them as tasks, with undo. | | !Wrap-up triage of the leftovers Wrap up: each leftover comes with a suggestion. | !The goodnight reflection Goodnight: a reflection that reads your note for tomorrow. |
Install
You'll need an API key for Anthropic, OpenAI, or an OpenAI-compatible provider to run it (see Models).
On a Mac, with Homebrew:
brew install jameynakama/tap/whatnowWithout Homebrew
Download the latest release:
curl -fLo whatnow https://github.com/jameynakama/whatnow/releases/latest/download/whatnow-darwin-arm64
chmod +x whatnow && sudo mv whatnow /usr/local/bin/On an Intel Mac, swap arm64 for amd64. The binary isn't signed, so downloading it through a
browser gets it blocked by Gatekeeper. curl doesn't, and xattr -d com.apple.quarantine whatnow
undoes a browser download.
From source
You need Go 1.27+, Node 24, and just.
git clone https://github.com/jameynakama/whatnow
cd whatnow
just install # builds the web UI and puts whatnow in your GOBINModels
whatnow works with Anthropic (the default) or any OpenAI-compatible API, such as OpenAI,
OpenRouter, Ollama, or LM Studio. Set it up on the first run, or later in settings. Keys are
stored in your OS keychain, never in the database. ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY in the
environment works too.
Consumer subscriptions (Claude Pro or Max, ChatGPT plans) can't power whatnow. It needs an API key.
Usage
whatnow # the terminal UI, which also serves the web UI at http://127.0.0.1:7777
whatnow serve # the web UI onlyInstalled with Homebrew, brew services start whatnow keeps the web UI running in the background
and starts it at login. Its log is in $(brew --prefix)/var/log/whatnow.log. whatnow then opens the
terminal UI against that server.
Both take -addr (default 127.0.0.1:7777) and -db (default
~/Library/Application Support/whatnow/whatnow.db).
The server only answers this machine. To reach it from your phone over
Tailscale, keep it on loopback and run tailscale serve --bg 7777, then
add the machine's Tailscale name (such as my-mac.tail1234.ts.net) under Remote access in
settings. Anyone who can reach an allowed host gets full access, so don't put it behind a Funnel.
Open the web UI once to set up a model. After that, use either UI, or both at once, since they
stay in sync. In the terminal, press ? for the keys.
The terminal UI
The TUI is a companion meant to sit in a spare pane all day, not a full replacement. It does the morning ritual (including calendar, Jira, Linear, and Review Queue pulls), today's list, what now?, pace, undo, quick add, and chat. These are web-only:
- first-run setup and all settings, including integrations and themes
- the wrap-up ritual (the TUI shows the day's-done card once you've wrapped)
- nudges
- editing a task's details, and the all-tasks list
Development
just dev # API plus the Vite dev server, at http://localhost:5173
just test # Go and web unit tests
just lint
just e2e # Playwright, against a fake model
just demo # a throwaway database on a clock you move with just clock 13:45License
AGPL-3.0. Use it, run it, and change it freely. If you run a modified whatnow for other people, over a network or otherwise, you must offer them its source under the same license. Contributions are accepted under the same license.
Commits up to 8481fdf were released under the MIT license, and copies of them remain under it.