verdande/README.md

verdande

Self-hosted tasks and projects, shared with the people you share the work with.
One binary, SQLite inside it, deployed as a Rune in Yggdrasil Panel.

---

Verdande is one of the three Norns — the one who spins that which is becoming. Not what has been, and not what is fated to be: the thing you are in the middle of. Which is what a to-do list is.

Status

All six phases are built. See What works today for what is tested and what is not.

Documentation: docs/, built with Material for MkDocs.

Why this exists

Todoist Pro, self-hosted, on your own hardware, with your own data — and with the integrations that a hosted product will not build for you: a real CalDAV server, a mail-to-task address, and an MCP endpoint so Claude can work your task list directly.

What it does

• Quick add that reads what you type. betal moms i morgen kl 10 p1 #Firma @regnskab becomes a task called "betal moms", due tomorrow at 10:00, priority 1, in Firma, labelled regnskab. Danish and English, mixed freely in one line.
• Projects, sections, sub-tasks, labels, saved filters. List, board and calendar views.
• Sharing. Internal users are created by an admin; anyone else joins through an invite link sent to their email. Owner, editor and viewer roles.
• Live sync. A change made by somebody else appears without a refresh.
• Recurring tasks as RRULE (RFC 5545), reminders, comments and attachments.
• Standards, not homegrown formats. iCalendar and CalDAV, ICS feeds, OAuth2 with PKCE, OpenAPI 3.1, MCP, Web Push, Argon2id.
• A PWA that works on a phone, installable, with swipe gestures and offline reading of what it has already cached.

What works today

Every phase in the plan is built. You can install it, add tasks by typing a sentence, share projects, watch somebody else's changes appear live, set repeating chores and reminders, save filters, import your Todoist account, sync two-way with Apple Reminders, forward mail into it, and add it to Claude as a connector.

Area	State
SQLite schema, migrations, WAL	Done, tested
Full-text search, Danish-aware	Done, tested
Quick-add parser (Danish + English)	Done, tested
Argon2id passwords, sessions, TOTP, recovery codes	Done, tested
Project roles and permission checks	Done, tested
REST API: projects, sections, tasks, sub-tasks, ordering	Done, tested
Today, Upcoming, search, activity log	Done, tested
Sharing: invites, roles, members	Done, tested
Live sync over WebSocket	Done
Web interface: sign-in, views, quick add, ⌘K, shortcuts	Done
Task detail: description, sub-tasks, comments, files, reminders	Done
Settings: account, notifications, integrations, AI, tokens, data	Done
Drag to reorder, in both the list and the board	Done
Recurring tasks (RRULE, Danish + English)	Done, tested
Reminders, absolute and relative	Done, tested
Saved filters with a query language	Done, tested
Board and calendar views	Done
ICS calendar feed, task durations	Done, tested
Project templates	Done, tested
Nightly backups with rotation	Done, tested
Comments, attachments, notifications, Web Push	Built
Todoist CSV import and export, account export	Done, tested
MCP server for Claude	Done, tested
CalDAV server (two-way VTODO)	Done, tested
Mail-to-task	Done, tested
AI layer (Anthropic/OpenAI/Google/local)	Built, degrades when unconfigured
Gmail: OAuth2 with PKCE, polling, one-way to tasks	Done, tested
Update notice for administrators	Done, tested
Personal API tokens	Done, tested
OpenAPI 3.1 spec, checked against the router	Done, tested
End-to-end smoke tests (Playwright)	Done
Documentation, landing page, licence	Done

Not finished: Web Push, the AI providers and the Gmail API calls are implemented against their specifications and have only ever been exercised there, not against live services. Everything else has an interface: opening a task shows its description, sub-tasks, comments, files and reminders, and the settings pages cover the account, notifications, integrations, AI, API tokens, import, export and templates.

Search finds grøn when you type gron, because Unicode does not consider ø an accented o and a Danish-first app that cannot do this is broken for its own users.

What it looks like

Board view — one column per section.	The light theme.

Regenerate these with go run ./tools/shots against a running instance.

Running it

As a Rune in Yggdrasil Panel

verdande is built to be deployed as a Rune in Yggdrasil Panel — that is its home, and the manifest ships in this repository. It runs anywhere Docker does as well.

1. Runes → Carve a rune (upload) and pick rune/verdande.yaml.
2. Create a server from it.
3. Set Public address to the address you will actually reach it on. verdande cannot work this out for itself — the host port is not chosen until the server exists — and invite links, password resets and calendar feeds are all built from it. {{PUBLIC_URL}} is the default and is usually right.
4. Point the SMTP settings at your mail server. Leave the host blank and verdande shows invite links in the app instead of emailing them, which is fine for a single user and no use at all for sharing.
5. Start it, open the URL, create the first account. That account is the admin.

With Docker directly

The package is private, and an anonymous pull fails with No such image rather than with a permission error. Log the host's Docker daemon in once, with a GitHub token carrying the read:packages scope:

echo "$GHCR_TOKEN" | docker login ghcr.io -u kristianwind --password-stdin

docker run -d --name verdande \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v verdande-data:/data \
  -e VERDANDE_BASE_URL=https://todo.example.dk \
  ghcr.io/kristianwind/verdande:latest

From source

go run ./cmd/verdande

Listens on :8080 and puts its data in /data, so for local work set VERDANDE_DATA_DIR somewhere writable:

VERDANDE_DATA_DIR=./data VERDANDE_DEV=true go run ./cmd/verdande

A plain go build produces the API without the web interface — the frontend is embedded only when built with -tags embedweb, so a clean checkout compiles without a Node toolchain installed.

Configuration

Everything is an environment variable; there is no config file. A Rune has nowhere to put one that the operator would ever see.

Variable	Default	What it does
VERDANDE_BASE_URL	http://localhost:8080	The public address. Invite links, password resets and ICS feeds are built from it.
VERDANDE_ADDR	:8080	Listen address.
VERDANDE_DATA_DIR	/data	Database, uploaded files and backups.
VERDANDE_SESSION_TTL	720h	How long a login lasts.
VERDANDE_INVITE_TTL	168h	How long an invite link stays valid.
VERDANDE_RESET_TTL	1h	How long a password-reset link stays valid.
VERDANDE_SMTP_HOST	—	Blank disables outbound mail; invite links are shown in the app instead.
VERDANDE_SMTP_PORT	587
VERDANDE_SMTP_USER	—
VERDANDE_SMTP_PASS	—
VERDANDE_SMTP_FROM	verdande@localhost	Sender address.
VERDANDE_SMTP_STARTTLS	true unless port 465	Port 465 is TLS from the first byte; everything else negotiates.
VERDANDE_SMTP_INSECURE	false	Skip certificate verification. For a self-signed internal mail server, and nothing else.
VERDANDE_GMAIL_CLIENT_ID	—	OAuth client from Google Cloud, if anyone will connect a mailbox.
VERDANDE_GMAIL_CLIENT_SECRET	—
VERDANDE_UPDATE_CHECK	false	Ask GitHub whether a newer release exists. Sends nothing about your instance.
VERDANDE_DEV	false	Human-readable logs at debug level.

What lives in /data

/data
├── verdande.db      SQLite, WAL mode
├── files/           attachments
└── backups/         nightly snapshots, 14 days

Back up the whole directory. If you copy verdande.db on its own while the server is running you will get a database missing its most recent writes — the -wal file is part of it.

Roadmap

1. MVP — auth, projects, sections, tasks, sub-tasks, priorities, due dates, quick add, Today and Upcoming, search, keyboard shortcuts. (done)
2. Sharing — invites, roles, assignees, comments, attachments, activity log, realtime sync, notifications. (done)
3. Pro parity — recurring tasks, reminders, filter queries, board and calendar views, durations, ICS feeds, templates, automatic backups. (done)
4. Import/export — Todoist CSV and official export in, CSV/JSON/ICS out. (done)
5. Integrations — CalDAV server, mail-to-task, Gmail, MCP server for Claude, and a provider-agnostic AI layer that also talks to a local model. (done)
6. Publication — documentation, landing page, open-source scaffolding. (done)

Development

go test ./...          # everything
go test -race ./...    # what CI runs
gofmt -l .             # must print nothing

Working on the interface means two processes: the API on 8080, and Vite on 5173 proxying /api to it, so the session cookie stays first-party exactly as it is in production.

VERDANDE_DATA_DIR=./data VERDANDE_DEV=true go run ./cmd/verdande

cd web && npm install && npm run dev

To run the whole thing as one binary the way it ships:

cd web && npm run build && cd .. && cp -r web/build cmd/verdande/webbuild && go build -tags embedweb -o verdande ./cmd/verdande

Commits follow Conventional Commits; releases are semver tags, which build and publish the image.

Non-goals

Karma and points. Team workspaces and organisations. Native apps. Mail integrations beyond Gmail and the forwarding address. Languages beyond Danish and English. A sync protocol of its own — CalDAV and the REST API are the sync.

License

MIT. See CONTRIBUTING.md and SECURITY.md.