up — Unplanned Work Logger

A PowerShell CLI tool for tracking unplanned work interruptions, with a terminal dashboard and Obsidian-compatible Markdown reports featuring Mermaid charts.

Quick Start

# Install (adds 'up' to your PowerShell profile)
.\Install-Up.ps1

# Restart terminal, then:
up -m "Recommended outlook encryption to business" -t 15m -c security
up dash

Installation

Option A — Automatic (recommended):

.\Install-Up.ps1

This copies Up.ps1 to ~/.unplanned-work/ and adds a dot-source line to your PowerShell profile.

Option B — Manual:

Add this line to your $PROFILE:

. "C:\path\to\Up.ps1"

Usage

Log an Entry

up -m "Fixed broken deployment pipeline" -t 45m -c infrastructure
up -m "Password reset escalation for CEO" -t 10m -c support
up -m "Emergency hotfix deploy" -t 1h30m -c deployment
up -m "Unplanned vendor call" -t 1h -c meetings

Parameters:

Flag	Description	Required
-m	Description of the unplanned work	Yes
-t	Time spent (see formats below)	Yes
-c	Category tag (default: general)	No

Time formats: 15m, 1h, 1h30m, 1.5h, 90 (bare number = minutes)

Terminal Dashboard

up dash

Displays a color-coded dashboard with:

• Today / This Week / This Month time summaries with progress bars
• Category breakdown with proportional bar charts
• Recent entries list

Reports

up report week    # Weekly report (current week)
up report month   # Monthly report (current month)

Reports are generated as Markdown files with:

• YAML frontmatter (compatible with Obsidian Dataview)
• Summary statistics table
• Mermaid pie charts (category breakdown)
• Mermaid bar charts (weekly trend in monthly reports)
• Daily entry logs
• Obsidian callout blocks with observations

Other Commands

up list           # Show last 10 entries
up list 25        # Show last 25 entries
up undo           # Remove the most recent entry
up config         # Show current configuration
up                # Show help

Obsidian Integration

Point reports at your Obsidian vault:

up config vault "C:\Users\you\Obsidian Vault\Unplanned Work"

Reports will now generate directly into your vault. The Mermaid charts render natively in Obsidian, and the YAML frontmatter works with Dataview queries like:

TABLE total_minutes as "Minutes", period
FROM #unplanned-work
SORT file.name DESC

Categories

Built-in categories with color coding:

Category	Terminal Color
security	Red
infrastructure	Blue
support	Yellow
meetings	Magenta
bugs	Dark Red
deployment	Cyan
compliance	Dark Yellow
general	Gray

Any custom string works too — just pass whatever tag you want with -c.

Data Storage

All data lives in ~/.unplanned-work/:

~/.unplanned-work/
├── data.json          # All entries
├── config.json        # Settings (vault path, etc.)
└── reports/
    ├── weekly/
    │   └── 2026-W16.md
    └── monthly/
        └── 2026-04.md

Override with the UP_HOME environment variable:

$env:UP_HOME = "D:\my-data\unplanned-work"

Example Report Output

The weekly report in Obsidian will render with interactive pie charts, formatted tables, and callout blocks — no plugins required beyond Obsidian's built-in Mermaid support.