tape

Freewrite with the tape TUI

Getting started

Prebuilt Binary

Download the latest release form the Releases tab. Only Linux supported at this time.

build from source

Cloning this repo and then building the project is another way to get the project. You'll need haskell's Stack.

Install with

stack install

Once installed launch with tape.

Cassette interface

Each tape is displayed as a cassette widget. Two reels flank a tape window: the left reel fills as you write, the right reel depletes, and the hub animates on every keypress. A stats line inside the tape window shows your timer and word count.

Timed sessions

Start a timed session with the -t flag followed by the number of minutes:

tape -t 10

A countdown timer appears inside each cassette in green. When time expires it turns red. The session keeps running so you can finish your thought. Press Esc to quit as usual.

Word goal

Set a word-count target with the -w flag:

tape -w 500

Your current word count and the goal display inside the cassette stats line (47 / 500). Combine both flags to show timer and word count together:

tape -t 10 -w 500

Releasing a new version

1. Bump version in package.yaml (e.g. 0.2.0.0) and merge all changes to main.
2. On GitHub, go to Releases → Draft a new release.
3. Create a new tag (e.g. v0.2.0) targeting main.
4. Write release notes, then click Publish release.

The Release workflow will automatically build the Linux binary and attach tape-linux-x86_64.tar.gz to the release. First run may take longer (30–45 minutes) due to cache warming; subsequent releases are should hopefully be faster.

Feature ideas

Visual indication of progress toward word goal

Have the words that go off the screen fill up some kind of container so that users can see how much progress they have made toward a goal of writing a certain amount of words

Daily freewrite management

What does it look like to use this tool to do a daily free-writing session?

Persist tapes between sessions

In freewriting what data would you want to persist between sessions?

Export for org mode and markdown

Make it so that you can save your daily sessions to other formats and be able to view them that way.

Tapes return to the beginning after fixed number of characters so you can review what you

Customise the hub animation

The reel hub animation frames are defined in a top-level constant reelFrames in app/Main.hs. Edit the list of (leftSpokeChar, rightSpokeChar) pairs to change the look; list length controls speed.