[FEATURE REQUEST] Time budgets

[krzysiek-b]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I have few projects where time has a budget.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to see when using today or show (with --totals) how much time I have spent/left so I can know how much of the time was used.

[ttscoff]

Interesting idea. How would you implement this? Where would you specify a budget for a tag? In a YAML file?

[krzysiek-b]

I'm thinking about TAG=time in doingrc. What is You're first thought?

budgets:
  ProjX: "12:00:00"
  ProjY: "02:00:00"

[ttscoff]

Ok, so you _do_ want to assign budgets. If I were going to implement this, I'd want to do it all the way, meaning there should be commands for assigning and modifying times to tags. Thus, I would probably opt to keep a separate YAML file with tags and times defined, rather than having Doing futz with the default configuration. So there could be a command like: doing budget @project1 3h15m That same command would update any existing time for the tag. I would probably want it to allow tag combinations, but I'm open to input on that. Seems like you might have a budget applied to a top level tag like @personal, and then additional tags like @project1 and @Project2, but I don't use a system like this and am not sure how complex this would need to get. Does the output need to account for nested/combined tags at all? Also, should the output be just in `--totals`, or should there be a separate budgeting output that shows all budgets with time used/time remaining? I can't guarantee I'll implement this, but it sounds like an interesting idea to play with.

…

-Brett

On 17 Mar 2025, at 12:49, Krzysztof Blacha wrote: krzysiek-b left a comment (ttscoff/doing#180) I'm thinking about TAG=time in doingrc. What is You're first thought? -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #180 (comment) You are receiving this because you were assigned. Message ID: ***@***.***>

[krzysiek-b]

Hi, currently I'm doing something like doing now @dev @projA-123 desc I have few transformations and this becomes doing now @dev @ProjA @projA-123 desc. For me ProjA represents the time bucket and I would like to have more control over it. The budget does not change very often in my case.
Having commands sounds great. Having top level budget sounds also okay but I think a simple summary over all budgets might also do the trick.

but I
don't use a system like this and am not sure how complex this would need
to get

Can we start with a simple idea? Budgets for tags, then I could do this per project. I can also transform any entry, add tags to all and then take from the parent budget work.
This feature looks like tag has a budget, and any entry in doing takes time from any tag budget used in that entry. Remaining time report would be great. Let me show few entries and expected outputs.

doing budget dev 100h
doing budget proja 50h
# 11:00
doing now @dev @projA impl feature A
#12:00
doing now -f @dev @projA impl feature B
#13:30
doing now -f @meeting @projA regarding feature B
#14:00
doing done

doing show --totals gets us this

         11:00am ║ @dev @projA impl feature A @done(2025-03-18 12:00)                               [Currently ] 00:01:00
         12:00pm ║ @dev @projA impl feature B @done(2025-03-18 13:30)                               [Currently ] 00:01:30
          1:30pm ║ @meeting @projA regarding feature B @done(2025-03-18 14:00)                      [Currently ] 00:00:30

--- Tag Totals ---
dev:     00:02:30
meeting: 00:00:30
proja:   00:03:00

Total tracked: 00:03:00

what I expect is

         11:00am ║ @all @dev @projA impl feature A @done(2025-03-18 12:00)                               [Currently ] 00:01:00
         12:00pm ║ @all @dev @projA impl feature B @done(2025-03-18 13:30)                               [Currently ] 00:01:30
          1:30pm ║ @all @meeting @projA regarding feature B @done(2025-03-18 14:00)                      [Currently ] 00:00:30

--- Tag Totals ---
dev:     00:02:30 (budget left 97h30m)
meeting: 00:00:30
proja:   00:03:00 (budget left 47h)

Total tracked: 00:03:00 (total budgets left 144h)

Having similar thing in doing show -o byday would be also nice :)

+----------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------+
|date      |item                                                        |duration|
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------+
|2025-03-18|@dev @projA impl feature A                                  |00:01:00|
|          |@dev @projA impl feature B                                  |00:01:30|
|          |@meeting @projA regarding feature B                         |00:00:30|
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------+
|                                                                 Total: 00:03:00 (total budgets left 144h) |
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------+
|                                                           Grand Total: 00:03:00 (total budgets left 144h)|
+----------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------+

[ttscoff]

Ok, so I let this get shuffled while I dealt with some work stuff (like losing my job :(). But I like this idea and will take a stab at implementing it soon.

[ttscoff]

Finally got around to implementing this, hope you're still interested. Basically followed your request outline exactly. Let me know how it works for you. Available in 2.1.94, pushed to rubygems.

https://github.com/ttscoff/doing/wiki/Time-Tracking#time-budgets

[krzysiek-b]

Great news, thank You! Will update today.

ps. Did you manage to find a new job? You never wrote where the layoff were.

[ttscoff]

Never found a job after Oracle laid me off in April. Sent out 100 some resumes and got 2 responses and 1 interview that didn't lead to a job. So I decided to go full time into indie development and am about to release Marked 3 and BlogBook, then nvUltra It's been a lot of coding :).

[krzysiek-b]

Hope You will find something soon :)

I'm not sure I did something wrong, but instead configuring budget some http requests started

kris@dev:/Hours$ doing budget
No tag budgets configured
kris@dev:/Hours$ doing budget java 66h
>         fzf: Compiling and installing fzf -- this will only happen once
>         fzf: fzf is copyright Junegunn Choi, MIT License <https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/blob/master/LICENSE>
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100  990k  100  990k    0     0   768k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 1330k
tar: fzf: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
--2026-02-13 18:11:08--  https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/releases/download/0.28.0/fzf-0.28.0-linux_amd64.tar.gz
Resolving github.com (github.com)... 140.82.121.3
Connecting to github.com (github.com)|140.82.121.3|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
...

[ttscoff]

that would happen if you don't have fzf installed. Do you? It says permission denied in there, so you may have to install manually (brew install fzf on Mac). Once it finds fzf, it should function normally. Let me know.

[krzysiek-b]

Yes executing it the second time seems helps.

I think I see one confusion, when I do doing today --totals i get java: 00:05:58 (budget left 60h2m) When I do doing show --totals i see java: 00:21:41 (budget left 44h19m)
I understood I configure a total budget and it should not change when i look at different time range reports.
I assume when doing today You do not have all entries, and need to load them just for the budget (still not display them). How to You see this?

[ttscoff]

Right, tag totals are only for the range being displayed, so you have to use show --totals to get an accurate budget. I don't see any simple way to have budgets automatically account for that, the tag totals are calculated on the fly during the display process, and only work on the range being displayed. Does that make sense?