Getting started

Two steps to a working setup, then the handful of things worth knowing on your first day. There is no account to create and almost nothing to configure — Nowspace reads files you already own.

Before you start

What you need

One thing: a folder of markdown files with PARA structure — an Obsidian vault is the usual home, though Nowspace only cares about the folders and files, not about Obsidian itself.

Nowspace looks for these folders and creates the two plan files itself if they aren't there yet:

YourVault/
  0-Inbox/
    Plan Week.md          <-- your weekly plan
    Plan Week Bucket.md   <-- parked tasks
  1-Projects/
  2-Areas/
  3-Resources/
  4-Archive/

Don't have a vault yet? Make an empty folder with those five directories and point Nowspace at it. You can open the same folder in Obsidian later — or never. The files are plain markdown either way, and everything Nowspace writes stays readable in any text editor.

If you already keep a vault, use it. Nowspace adds two files to 0-Inbox/ and otherwise leaves your notes alone.

First launch

Up and running in two steps

Open the app. On first launch it opens the Settings tab automatically.
Point it at your vault. Browse to your vault folder — the app auto-detects the PARA structure and switches to the Plan tab with your week loaded.

That's it — there's no account step. Nowspace has no server of its own, no sign-up, no telemetry and no hidden hooks. Your plan is markdown in your vault, and the source code is open so you can verify that yourself.

macOS only

If macOS says the app is damaged

Nothing is damaged. Nowspace isn't notarized with Apple — that costs a Developer ID and this is a free .org project — and "damaged and can't be opened" is simply the wording Gatekeeper uses for unsigned apps it has quarantined.

Copy Nowspace.app to /Applications, then clear the quarantine flag once per install or update:

xattr -cr /Applications/Nowspace.app

You only need this on macOS, and only once per version. Windows and Linux builds install normally.

Your first day

The five things worth knowing

Nowspace is deliberately small. Learn these and you have essentially all of it — the rest is your own markdown.

📝

Capture without thinking

Add a task and move on. No required fields, no category to pick, no questions asked — the whole value of an inbox is the trust that lets you let go of a thought. Sorting happens later.

🪣

The bucket holds "later"

Anything without a home goes in the bucket and stays there quietly. Pull it into a day when you actually want it, by dragging. Nothing nags you from the bucket.

🎺

Trumpet, elephant, hourglass

Hover a task for its icons. The trumpet makes it your focus and offers a 15 or 30 minute pomodoro. The elephant breaks a daunting task into small steps. The hourglass marks it blocked and waiting on someone else.

🧭

Priorities, not dates

Tasks carry A/B/C/D rather than deadlines — A must happen today, B should, C can, D is optional. A day with three finished A-tasks is a good day, whatever else happened.

📌

Contexts keep work at work

Optionally split tasks into work, volunteer and personal, then show only work during work hours. The rare private errand that genuinely must happen today gets pinned — a deliberate exception rather than an open gate.

🔍

Notes sit beside the plan

A scratchpad with wiki-links, plus a reference browser onto folders you nominate. The day's thinking lives next to the day's tasks instead of in another window.

Why it works this way →

Alternative

Run with Docker

Prefer a web app? Run Nowspace in a container without installing Python or Node.js — your vault folder is mounted in, and changes sync straight back to your files on disk.

git clone git@github.com:JanLin/nowspace.git
cd nowspace
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — set VAULT_PATH
docker compose up -d

Then open http://localhost:8000. Full details, including an always-on-Mac plus phone setup over Tailscale, are in the README.

Ready when you are

Free, open, and yours. Install it in minutes and point it at your vault.

Download Nowspace