A file-based task tracker. One markdown file per task, no tooling, no database. Plain files so they diff, review, and grep like everything else in the repo.

Filename: NNNN-short-slug.md, zero-padded, monotonically increasing.

Every task starts with YAML frontmatter:

---
id: 0001
title: Short imperative title
status: TODO # TODO | IN_PROGRESS | DONE
created: 2026-07-29
area: api # api | web | shared | cli | ci | docs | format
---

Then free-form markdown. Useful sections, in rough order of value:

• Why — what breaks, or what's worse, without this
• Acceptance — how we know it's done
• Notes — findings, decisions made along the way, links to PRs

TODO → IN_PROGRESS → DONE. Edit the status field in place; don't move or rename the file. A task's history then lives in git where it belongs, and id stays a stable reference.

Prefer small tasks. If a task can't be described in a paragraph, it's probably two tasks.

When a task turns up something worth remembering — a design decision, a reason, a constraint that wasn't obvious — write it into DECISIONS.md rather than leaving it in the task file. Tasks are ephemeral; decisions aren't.

grep -h -e '^id:' -e '^title:' -e '^status:' tasks/*.md | paste - - -

Just the open ones:

grep -l 'status: TODO' tasks/*.md