Last time, I talked about developing my own task management system and how I decided the app was becoming too much of a monolith, so I decided to break it apart. This time, I want to talk a bit about how things are structured.

There are three levels to the overall architecture.

First, there are three “core” applications:

— Auteureist, my writing app

— Jouraleist, my journaling and time stream app

— TNA Today, which is responsible for determining and showing my “next step”.

Second, there are the apps that manage all the data:

— TNA Tasks, which manages tasks and their schedules and pulls data from the Apple calendar and reminders apps.

— TNA Lists, which manages my lists, including grocery and accomplishments. These are two special lists.

— TNA Projects, which manages projects, project tasks,

— TNA Notes, manages, um, notes.

— TNA Habits, which manages daily habits and tasks that reoccur daily

— TNA Cleaning, which manages house-related cleaning tasks.

— TNA Mood, which manages tracking physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual mood.

All the apps read and write data in YAML format stored in Apple’s iCloud Drive so it syncs across devices.

Besides pulling data from Apple reminders and calendars, Journaleist pulls data from Apple’s HealthKit and my RSS feeds (which pull in my blog, social media, and Goodreads data), local weather and location. I can add other sources as needed.

I chose to store data in YAML format because I wanted to avoid heavy-weight formats such as JSON and XML, and didn’t want to use a database structure. I wanted something human-readable that allowed for some metadata storage, so I could easily import the data into apps other than my own.

Right now, everything works. The apps work the way I work and I’m satisfied with how they are progressing. They aren’t done, however. I’m still fine-tuning the UI and UX and tweaking some functionality.

Also, I want to be able to pull in Apple Notes and Bear app notes into my TNA-Notes app.

As I mentioned last time, I’m no longer using Apple Reminders or Calendar apps. I want to decouple from using Apple Notes and Bear.

I’m thinking about writing my own Mail app that works the way I want, but that’s not worth the effort.

For now, here’s an overview of the TNA architecture.