Show HN: Todo or else, a CLI for enforcing Todo deadlines

2 points by jbreckmckye a month ago · 3 comments · 1 min read

The problem with TODO comments is that nothing actually forces you to resolve them. Developers agree to take shortcuts they will revisit, but never actually get around to it.

A good example is feature flags... how often do you go back and actually clean up old flag code?

The tool:

Todo or Else is a small CLI written in Go but supporting multiple languages. Add it to your project and then annotate your TODOs with "tags" like so:

    TODO (by:2027-03, owner:Fran) do something

- using `by:YYYY-MM` or `by:YYYY-MM-DD` to set a deadline

- using `from:YYYY-MM-DD` to set a created date (default staleness threshold is 90 days, configurable)

(I used Go for a few reasons. Firstly: the performance is really solid, on my newish MBP the scanner can process a few thousand source files in just under two seconds. Secondly: the cross compilation story is still really good, even with CGO. Zig handles the tree sitter compilation for MacOS and Linux.)