Thaings

Thaings adds agentic workers to to-dos in Things. It's AI augmenting Things. Thaings. You get it.

How it works

Select a to-do in Things and run the Thaings shortcut. A background daemon picks it up and tags it Working while Claude processes it. When done, the results are appended to the to-do's notes and the tag changes to Ready. You decide whether to mark it complete or continue the conversation.

Each to-do gets its own conversation context—Claude can reference previous exchanges in that to-do's history.

Assumptions

• macOS
• Homebrew
• Things
• Claude Code installed via Homebrew
• Ruby 3.0+ via rbenv (the daemon expects Ruby at ~/.rbenv/shims/ruby)
• Apple Shortcuts (comes with macOS)

Installation

Quick install

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danott/thaings/main/install.sh)"

This clones the repository to $HOME/thaings, sets up a LaunchAgent, and creates a to-do in your Things Inbox that walks you through the remaining setup.

Manual install

If you prefer a different location:

git clone https://github.com/danott/thaings.git /path/to/thaings
cd /path/to/thaings
./bin/install

Note: The Apple Shortcut expects Thaings at $HOME/thaings. If you install elsewhere, you'll need to edit the shortcut to point to your install location.

Known caveats

1. Collapse to-dos before calling the shortcut. Things' "Get Selected Items" returns unpredictable data when a to-do is open for editing.
2. Don't edit to-dos while Thaings is working. Things' URL scheme updates are unpredictable when the notes field is focused. Let the to-do rest until it's tagged Ready.

Configuration

Configuration lives in .env (created from .env.example during installation). All variables are prefixed with THAINGS_ to avoid conflicts.

Required

THAINGS_THINGS_AUTH_TOKEN — Thaings updates to-dos via the Things URL scheme, which requires an auth token. Get yours from Things → Settings → General → Enable Things URLs → Manage.

Optional

THAINGS_SYSTEM_PROMPT_FILE — Path to a custom system prompt file. Defaults to default-system-prompt.md in the Thaings directory.

THAINGS_MAX_TURNS — Maximum agentic turns Claude can take per to-do. Defaults to 10.

THAINGS_TIMEOUT_SECONDS — How long to wait for Claude to respond before timing out. Defaults to 300 (5 minutes).

THAINGS_ALLOWED_TOOLS — Comma-separated list of tools Claude can use. Defaults to WebSearch,WebFetch.

THAINGS_CLAUDE_PATH — Path to the Claude binary. Defaults to /opt/homebrew/bin/claude.

Testing

Automated Tests

ruby test/end_to_end_test.rb

End-to-End Test

1. Ensure the daemon is running: launchctl list | grep thaings
2. Create a to-do in Things with a simple prompt (e.g., "What is 2+2?")
3. Run the Thaings shortcut on that to-do
4. Watch tail -f log/daemon.log for processing activity
5. Verify the to-do gets the Ready tag and Claude's response in notes

See CLAUDE.md for more detailed testing instructions.

License

MIT