mike-north/ofocus-triage

OmniFocus Inbox Triage & Co-Planning

Use the ofocus CLI (see the ofocus skill for the full command reference). For a proactive "what should I focus on" summary, use the ofocus-brief skill instead; this skill is for acting — triaging, planning, reviewing.

Compute, don't reason. OmniFocus has already computed the hard parts — call the deterministic commands rather than pulling raw task lists into context and reasoning over them:

| Need | Command | | ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- | | Due today / overdue / flagged | ofocus today | | The week ahead | ofocus this-week | | Stuck projects (active, no available next action) | ofocus stalled-projects | | The next action per active project | ofocus next-actions | | Raw inbox / flagged / filtered lists | ofocus tasks --in-inbox, --flagged, … | | Workload stats | ofocus stats | | What changed | ofocus changes |

Always read machine output with --format toon — identical data to JSON in ~40% fewer tokens, no information loss.

Triage the inbox

1. Read the inbox: ofocus tasks --in-inbox --format toon.
2. For each item, decide a proposed disposition: a project, tags, defer/due dates, flag, or drop/delete. Use ofocus next-actions / stalled-projects to place an item where it actually moves work forward.
3. Present all proposals as one batch for the user to approve or amend. Never mutate without confirmation.
4. On approval, apply with ofocus update <id> … (or ofocus update-batch <ids…> for shared changes; ofocus complete / drop / delete as decided).

Co-plan

• Break large or vague items into concrete next actions with ofocus subtask <parent-id> "<title>".
• Turn an inbox note into an actionable task title + project.
• When a project is stalled (from ofocus stalled-projects), the fix is usually a decision: propose a concrete next action and, on approval, add it so the project becomes unstuck.

Weekly review

• ofocus projects-for-review → walk each; after reviewing, ofocus review <project-id>.
• ofocus stalled-projects → for each, propose a next action (or on-hold/drop) so nothing sits silently stuck.
• ofocus next-actions → sanity-check that every active project has a sensible next step.

Acting on a change notification

When the assistant surfaces an OmniFocus change (a SessionStart/end-of-turn digest, an urgent interjection, or a soft nudge to add a follow-up task), review live state — ofocus today, ofocus tasks --in-inbox, ofocus tasks --flagged — and triage what's there. Do not rely on the change log; the notification is only the signal that something is worth a look. For a soft nudge, add a task to your task list to follow up when you finish your current work (skip if you already have one).