Desklog

Write it down. Mark what matters. Track the work.

Three verbs. Nothing is required — write alone is a full product. Each step adds something, never takes anything away.

Write

Dump everything into one page. Notes, tasks, half-thoughts, client context. No project picker. No "where does this go" before you've finished the sentence.

→ your note

Mark

Tag a line now later assign park as you write it. Hit Today — your quadrant board appears, built from the note you wrote anyway.

→ your Today view

Track

Click any line to start timing it. Stop when you're done. Time Log groups every session by client or project, totals it up, copies billing-ready in one click.

→ your time log

Capture continuously. Mark as you write. Track as you work. (Or don't. The note still works.)

For client work and hourly billing

This is where Desklog earns its keep. The daily flow that used to live across three tabs, now in one.

The consultant's daily loop

1.Write rough client notes as they happen — no template, no project selection.

2.Tag the lines that matter: now for today, assign to delegate, later to schedule.

3.Click a line to start timing it. The task name is already written — no form to fill in.

4.At end of day: Time Log shows hours grouped by client. Copy → paste onto invoice. Done.

Also works as a plain personal scratchpad

No setup, no folders, no required syntax. A plain-text user who never writes a heading, never clicks a timer, never tags a thing — still gets a fully functional synced notepad with version history. The system is optional. The notepad is not.

One page. Three levels. Zero config.

Write a heading because you needed one — and the hierarchy exists. No project tree to build, no settings screen, no form.

#
Project
The client or initiative. Website Redesign. One heading.
##
Activity
A phase of work inside it. Discovery. Build. Review.
—
Task
The line itself. What you click to time. What you tag to triage.

Show full syntax reference

# / ##

Project and activity. A heading you write becomes a grouping the system reads.

plain line

A task. No special syntax — a sentence is enough.

[ ] / [x]

Done or not. Click to toggle. Checked lines strike through and fade.

Name |

Who or what it's for. Renders in amber, groups your Time Log.

[now]

Urgent + Important. Do it today.

[later]

Important, not urgent. Schedule it before it becomes urgent.

[assign]

Urgent, not important. Delegate it.

[park]

Neither. Someday. Maybe. That's fine.

click line

Starts a timer. The task name is already there.

- / > / ---

Bullets, blockquotes, dividers. Just the note.

Four tags. One priority framework.

Structure answers where does this belong. These tags answer what do I do next. Most tools force you to pick one lens. Here both live in the same line you were writing anyway — the same four-quadrant logic Eisenhower used, the same one GTD converges on.

Tag	Eisenhower quadrant	What it means for your day
now	Urgent + Important	Do it. Today. The Today view counts these and warns you if there are more than five.
later	Important, not urgent	Schedule it before it quietly becomes urgent and ruins your Thursday.
assign	Urgent, not important	Delegate it. It matters — just not to you personally, right now.
park	Neither	Someday. Maybe never. Either outcome is fine.

Everything else in your note is just the note. These four tags are the only signal the Today view reads. Nothing else is tracked, counted, or judged.

Click a line. That's the timer.

In every other timer app, you start tracking by leaving your notes, switching to a second tool, and filling in a description — of something you've already written. Then you switch back. Then you forget to stop the timer. Then you reconstruct Friday from memory.

Here the thing you're timing is the sentence you already wrote. Same tab. No form. Time logged is an invoice waiting to happen.

00:14:22 On it — Acme | audit current pages

Every stopped timer lands in your Time Log, grouped by the name before the pipe, with a running total. One button copies it, ready to paste onto an invoice. At a normal freelance rate, a few unlogged minutes a day adds up to real money by December.

Why pay for a notepad?

Fair question. Notepad.exe is free and has been there since Windows 3.1. The honest answer: you're not paying for the notepad. You're paying for the part that remembers, tracks, and tells you what's been sitting in "later" since March.

The usual setup

A notes app with sync~$8–10/mo

A separate timer app~$9/mo

Retyping tasks between bothdaily

A GTD app you set up once and abandoned±$0 sunk cost

Three toolsthree habits

→

Notes, timer, and triageone page

Nothing to retype between apps—

Sync, history, sign-inincluded

GTD system, no setup requiredincluded

One subscriptionone habit

The simplicity promise — in writing

We will not add features to justify the subscription. No sidebar, no dashboard, no kanban view, no calendar integration, no weekly email digest — unless there is an overwhelming reason. The goal is to stay as simple as a notepad.

You can verify this at any time. Paste this into Notepad:

# Website Redesign
## Discovery
[ ] Acme | audit current pages [now]
[x] Acme | kickoff call
[ ] Acme | draft proposal deck [assign]

You lose nothing. Every word is readable, portable, unencrypted plain text. The system lives on top of the text — it never replaces it.

What's already here

Grouped by what it does for you, not what the engineer called it.

Write without deciding first

A focus-mode editor that renders as you write — click away and it's formatted, click back in and it's raw text. Headings, checkboxes, bullets, quotes, dividers. No toolbar. No decisions before the sentence is finished.

Track without leaving the page

Click any line to start timing it. Time Log groups every session by name or project, totals it, and copies billing-ready in one click — client name, task, duration, ready to paste onto an invoice. The task name is already there. You wrote it.

Decide without a weekly ritual

Tag as you write. Hit Today for a quadrant board of where your day actually stands — and a friendly warning if your now list has quietly grown past five. You already knew.

Keep it without managing it

Google sign-in. Synced automatically as you write. Daily snapshots at local midnight on Free (15-day retention) — every 3 hours on Pro, with monthly snapshots kept for a year. Restore any snapshot in one click. The status strip warns if sync is overdue; the burger drawer shows exactly when the last snapshot was taken. Offline cache so a dropped connection never costs you a sentence.

AI Tidy — when you want it

One button sends your note to Claude. It fixes spelling, removes exact duplicates, makes tasks more actionable — and preserves every heading, tag, checkbox, and pipe exactly where you left them. Rate-limited per session. Never runs without you asking.

Where this is going

The page stays a notepad. What Today can tell you about it grows — using only what you've already written.

Project health. Today starts noticing when a project's gone quiet — no changes in a while, under the same heading you've always been writing. No new syntax. Pattern recognition on what's already there.

A lighter weekly review. Surfaces what's been sitting in later a suspiciously long time, and what's been stuck in now far past when it should have moved. Roughly — not a guarantee.

later

Downloadable CSV export. Time Log already copies billing-ready today. Pro adds a proper CSV download by client and project — for accountants, spreadsheets, and the clients who ask for "a file."

Both intelligence features work off existing daily snapshots — comparing your note against itself over time. Nothing gets reorganized without you. Today only tells you what it can actually see. We'd rather say less and be right.

Pricing

Free covers real, honest use — not a crippled trial designed to annoy you into upgrading.

Free

Full editor, timer, and Today view
All four priority tags and quadrant board
Google sign-in and cross-device sync
Daily snapshots at local midnight — 15-day retention
Generous character limit (it's a notepad, not a novel)

Pro

coming soon

Snapshots every 3 hours — 30-day retention
Monthly snapshots retained for 12 months
Downloadable CSV time log (copy-to-clipboard is free)
Project health and weekly review
Priority on what gets built next

Pro helps you recover billable hours, catch neglected client work, and see what actually moved each week.

Open a blank page. See what it becomes.

No workspace to configure, no import flow, no tutorial you'll skip anyway. Sign in and start typing — the system is already there, it'll introduce itself when you need it.

Your notes are plain text. Export anytime. We don't train on your content. If you ever leave, paste your notes anywhere — they were always yours.

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