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Talk To Your TODOs

I talk to my TODO list. You should too.

NOTE 📜 This is a post about AI. All views are my own and do not represent my employer. Please review my Disclosures.

I love TODO lists. I especially love spending days bringing one up, and promptly abandoning it.

Weeks later, I'm using it again. It's captured most of my priorities, but not all of them. Stuff falls through the cracks, I start to not trust my TODOs. Day-by-day it falls further out of sync, until I stop using it. Some time goes by, I fill the missing pieces and I'm back checking off boxes!

But a wildly new priority appeared! My system falls out of sync again, and it won't resync until I do a massive overhaul. You guessed it, I'm off working on the wild project while my original TODOs wither away.

What's wrong with me?

The Solution

What's wrong with me is I like doing stuff. Real stuff. I hate grunt work, a lot. And most of the work in maintaining a task manager is grunt work:

  1. Seeding. The initial high. Step 1 of using a task manager, relentlessly filling it with your current TODOs. You feel a rush of productivity, without moving one step closer to your goals.
  2. Maintenance. The reality of using a task manager. Adding new tasks, big or small. Removing ones that are no longer relevant, which is much harder. Keeping it in sync with your life.
  3. Reprioritize. The curveballs. Most change a few tasks in a project, some change entire projects, and rarely one will have you reconfigure most of your active areas of work.

So lately, instead of writing TODO lists, I've been talking to TODO lists instead.

With AI, I've been able to automate away the grunt work so I can focus on doing the work. Using natural language, I can turn prompts into projects. "Help me plan out a wedding." "Review my taxes folder and make me a template for my yearly filing." "Scan my contacts, find my relatives, and add tasks to wish them a Happy Birthday." These are actual projects Gemini has helped me with.

Here's how you can talk to your TODO list as well.

The MCP server in action: a plain-English request in the terminal becomes tasks filed in OmniFocus.

MCP: The TODO->AI Connector

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. An MCP server is a small adapter that lets an AI client (the Gemini CLI, Cursor, ChatGPT desktop) reach into another app and use it as a set of tools: read your tasks, create new ones, retag a project, run a query. The model never swallows your database. It calls tools, and the server decides which tools exist and what each one is allowed to touch.

That fence is the point. Your tasks aren't baked into a model or shipped off to train one. The server sits between the assistant and your data, exposing a short, named list of actions and nothing else. The model picks which to call; the server enforces the rest.

My Setup

I've been using OmniFocus on-and-off for about 10 years, so it's my tool of choice. For myself, the only way I can consistently use a TODO list is if it has all my tasks.

My setup is deliberately boring. I run one of the OmniFocus MCP servers from the catalog below against my own database, and drive it from the terminal with the Gemini CLI, which is already open all day. Everything below is something I've actually asked it.

You don't need a terminal, though. The same server plugs into a GUI chat client just as well: the Gemini app, Cursor, anything that speaks MCP lets you register a server and start asking in plain English. The terminal is my preference, not a requirement. Wherever you already talk to an assistant is where this lives.

How I Actually Use It

Three chores eat most of what a task manager costs you, one for each flavor of grunt work above: clearing the inbox is maintenance, the weekly review is where you catch a reprioritization before it derails you, and starting a project from scratch is seeding without the dread. Here's how each one goes when the assistant takes the boring half.

Inbox Triage

Capture and organize are two different moods, and the switch between them is where I lose tasks. Over a day I'll dump twenty things into the inbox: "call the vet," "renew the passport," "that book Taylor mentioned," "look into the weird noise the car makes." Then I never sort them, because sorting means stopping.

So I don't sort. At the end of the day I ask it to triage: file anything it's confident about, ask me about the rest. The obvious ones land on their own: the vet call in Errands, the passport in a Travel project. It hands back the two or three it can't place, I answer those, and the inbox is empty. I never left capture mode.

Weekly Review

The weekly review is the GTD ritual I skip the most, because it's an hour of mechanical cleanup before any thinking happens. That mechanical hour is exactly what an assistant is for. I run it in the classic three passes and let the model do the grunt work in each.

Get Clear. Empty the inbox, then: "Find any project with no next action and flag it. List tasks missing a tag or a time estimate and propose values." Stalled projects are what quietly kill a system; having them surfaced instead of hunted is most of the battle. I approve or correct the proposed tags in one pass.

Get Current. "Pull my Waiting For list. Cross-reference my calendar for the last two weeks and the next two, and tell me what I've committed to that isn't in here yet." Half the time it catches a meeting that implied a task I never wrote down.

Get Creative. This is the part I actually want to do, so it's the part I keep. "Based on my active projects, give me a mind-sweep: what am I likely forgetting?" It's a trigger list tuned to my real life instead of a generic checklist. Most of it I discard. The one or two it surfaces that I'd genuinely dropped pay for the whole review.

Project Planning

A blank project is the most expensive thing in any task manager. Spelling out the dozen obvious sub-tasks of "plan a camping trip" is pure overhead, and that overhead is usually what stops me from starting at all.

So I start from a draft instead. "Set up a project for a long weekend in Tahoe: permits, gear check, food plan, the drive, who's coming. Give it sub-tasks and rough due dates working back from the 15th." Thirty seconds later there's a real project, sequenced and dated. Maybe half the tasks are right. I delete the ones that don't apply, fix the dates, add the two things it couldn't have known. Editing a wrong draft beats producing a right one from a blank page, every time.

Pick Yours

If OmniFocus isn't your task manager, almost everything else has an MCP server too. Most have several.

A few notes before the catalog:

  • Official means the company that builds the tool ships the server. Prefer these unless you need self-hosted, on-prem, or a feature only the community fork has.
  • Most Tier-1 tools (i.e., Atlassian, Notion, Asana) now run a hosted, OAuth-only MCP at mcp.{vendor}.com/mcp or similar. SSE transport is being phased out; assume Streamable HTTP unless told otherwise.
  • Star counts last cross-checked May 2026 and drift weekly. The registry.modelcontextprotocol.io registry is the canonical place to look up new entries.

Task Managers

OmniFocus

  • themotionmachine/OmniFocus-MCP Query, dump, edit, batch. JXA under the hood, easiest to drop into Claude Desktop today.
  • jqlts1/omnifocus-mcp-enhanced When themotionmachine hits its ceiling: custom perspectives, real hierarchical sub-tasks, Planned Dates, reparenting that doesn't break.
  • vitalyrodnenko/OmnifocusMCP Pick your runtime: a Rust binary on Homebrew, Python on uv, or TypeScript on Node. 45 tools, four prompts, same surface across all three.

Things 3

  • hald/things-mcp Reads everything (Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday) and, as of v0.8.1, writes too: add and update todos, projects, and areas via AppleScript.
  • rossshannon/Things3-MCP The fork that lets you actually create. Sub-tasks fall back to Markdown checkboxes in notes (Cultured Code's AppleScript surface won't allow native checklists).
  • ebowman/mcp-server-things Defensive by default: an AI-tag-creation guard, 30-second AppleScript timeouts, env-vars for every behavior. The one to pick if you don't want surprises.

Todoist

  • Official: Doist/todoist-mcp 44 tools, hosted at ai.todoist.net/mcp, OAuth, MCP Apps support so widgets render in chat. (The older @doist/todoist-ai name still works as a thin shim; new installs use todoist-mcp.)
  • greirson/mcp-todoist DRYRUN=true is the killer feature: rehearse bulk operations before committing them. Quick-Add natural-language parser included.
  • abhiz123/todoist-mcp-server ~390 stars, untouched since April 2025, still works. Light enough to keep around even after switching to the official.

TickTick / Dida365

  • karbassi/mcp-ticktick Habits, focus timers, filters, calendar. The only TickTick server that feels like the actual app. Wants both a v1 token and a v2 cookie to unlock the full surface.
  • jacepark12/ticktick-mcp OAuth2 with auto-refresh and a flag for Dida365 users in China. Easy on-ramp.
  • liadgez/ticktick-mcp-server 100% API coverage (112 ops) plus a local cache to fix TickTick's missing "list all tasks" endpoint.

Apple Reminders

  • FradSer/mcp-server-apple-events Native EventKit, not AppleScript, so it doesn't crawl on a real Reminders database. Now covers Calendar too; recurrence rules and location triggers come along for the ride.
  • mggrim/apple-reminders-mcp-server 18 tools with chrono-node parsing natural-language dates ("next Tuesday at 4," "in two weeks"). List-color and emblem control if you care about the visual side.
  • shadowfax92/apple-reminders-mcp AppleScript-only, basic CRUD. Smaller surface, easier to audit before letting an LLM near your reminders. (Dormant since early 2025.)

Microsoft To Do

Google Tasks

Habitica

  • iBreaker/habitica-mcp-server Tasks and checklists are the productivity half; pets, mounts, shop, and skills are the rest. 8 capability domains in one server, all gamified.

TaskWarrior

  • awwaiid/mcp-server-taskwarrior Wraps the local task binary. Set up TaskWarrior once, get an LLM-friendly interface for free.
  • acebaggins/taskwarrior-mcp Real-time updates and prompt scaffolding so the model knows what to do next without you spelling it out.
  • meirm/taskwarrior-ng A full web app on top of TaskWarrior, plus MCPO to expose the same MCP server as REST. Useful when you want both interfaces.

Amazing Marvin

Remember The Milk

No native community MCP server. RTM users currently rely on Zapier's MCP wrapper for Remember The Milk actions. Genuine gap if you want to fill it.

Time-blocking & calendars

Sunsama

  • Official: api.sunsama.com/mcp Hosted, OAuth, Streamable HTTP. Tasks and workflows, no setup beyond authorize.
  • robertn702/mcp-sunsama 15 task tools with GitHub and Gmail integrations baked into create-task. Stream and group operations included; HTTP-Basic-Auth option for self-hosted setups.

Reclaim.ai

Motion

  • h3ro-dev/motion-mcp-server Built-in rate limiting that self-throttles to a conservative 12 requests every 3 minutes (well under Motion's 12-per-minute cap) so you don't get throttled mid-loop. SQLite persistence across restarts.

Routine

  • Official First-party local server (npx routine-mcp-server; needs the Routine desktop app running and Node 18+). Calendars, tasks, and notes from the daily-planner app.

Project Management

Asana

  • Official: mcp.asana.com/v2/mcp Streamable HTTP, OAuth 2.1, GA in early 2026. The V1 SSE endpoint died May 11, 2026; if you're still pointing there, you're broken.
  • roychri/mcp-server-asana READ_ONLY_MODE if you don't trust the LLM yet, custom-field operations if you do. ~137 stars and still active.
  • n0zer0d4y/asana-project-ops Enterprise fork of roychri with batch operations, direct section assignment, and selective tool activation.

ClickUp

  • Official: mcp.clickup.com/mcp ~50 tools across 14 categories, OAuth 2.1 with PKCE. No delete tools, intentionally. Rate limits depend on plan and the Everything-AI add-on.
  • taazkareem/clickup-mcp-server Multi-account, hybrid OAuth/API-key, fuzzy global search, persona-based tool filtering. The community option people stayed on after ClickUp went official.
  • hauptsacheNet/clickup-mcp Three modes (read-minimal, read, write) and append-only descriptions, so the LLM can't blow away your notes by accident. Image support with size budgeting for token-conscious agents.

Linear

  • Official: mcp.linear.app/mcp Issues, projects, milestones, comments, teams, cycles, initiatives, roadmaps, documents. Full surface, OAuth 2.1.
  • tacticlaunch/mcp-linear Goes deeper than the official: cycles, milestones, roadmaps, saved views, templates, custom fields, webhooks, audits, rate-limit health checks.
  • dvcrn/mcp-server-linear Multi-workspace via tool prefixing. The right pick if you run Linear across several agencies or clients. (Lightly maintained; last updated April 2025.)

Jira / Confluence (Atlassian)

  • Official: mcp.atlassian.com/v1/mcp (Rovo) Cloud-only but covers Jira, Confluence, Compass, and Bitbucket Cloud in one server. SSE endpoint deprecates June 30, 2026.
  • sooperset/mcp-atlassian 5,000 stars and 72+ tools across Jira (Cloud + Server / Data Center) and Confluence. The only good answer for self-hosted Jira. Patch to v0.17.0+ for the Feb 2026 RCE/SSRF fix.
  • aashari/mcp-server-atlassian-jira Five generic HTTP tools that hit any Jira API endpoint, with TOON responses for 30–60% token savings on big issues.

Monday.com

  • Official: mondaycom/mcp Hosted at mcp.monday.com/mcp, OAuth 2.1. Boards, items, columns, groups, plus Dynamic API Tools that give you full GraphQL access on the fly.
  • Prat011/mcp-server-monday Python via uvx, Smithery-installable, Docker option. Pragmatic and quick. (Formerly sakce/mcp-server-monday; the repo was transferred, not forked.)

Notion

  • Official: makenotion/notion-mcp-server 4,257 stars. v2.0 uses the data-sources abstraction from API 2025-09-03. Notion is steering toward the hosted mcp.notion.com/mcp. Heads-up: there's an open prompt-injection-via-page-content advisory (#238 at last check).
  • suekou/mcp-notion-server Markdown conversion to cut tokens, tool allowlist via --enabledTools. The community server that makes Notion responses LLM-readable.
  • awkoy/notion-mcp-server Production-positioned: Zod-validated, batch operations, comments, search, archive/restore.

Trello

  • GabrielRamirez/trello-mcp 73 tools across nine categories, Docker-ready, remote HTTP support. The most thorough Trello server in the catalog.
  • delorenj/mcp-server-trello Built-in token-bucket rate limiting (300/10s per key, 100/10s per token) and persistent board switching. Actively maintained (SSRF protection and due-reminders landed mid-2026).
  • adriangrahldev/advanced-trello-mcp-server Production-hardened HTTP layer: keep-alive, exponential-backoff retries with jitter, batch tools, attachment downloads.

Shortcut

  • Official: useshortcut/mcp-server-shortcut Hosted at mcp.shortcut.com/mcp (OAuth) or local stdio (PAT). Stories, epics, iterations, objectives, docs, custom fields. Ship-safe with SHORTCUT_READONLY=true and a SHORTCUT_TOOLS allowlist.

Wrike

  • Official: mcp.wrike.com Hosted. Task queries, folder/project navigation, prioritization, and meeting-to-task conversion.

Smartsheet

  • Official Hosted. Sheet read/summarize, row CRUD, attachments. Requires a Business / Enterprise / Advanced Work Management plan.
  • josh-cornett/smartsheetmcp TypeScript, Streamable HTTP and SSE, broad endpoint coverage with documented pagination so the LLM doesn't silently truncate your sheets.
  • terilios/smartsheet-server Healthcare-analytics flavor: clinical-note summarization, sentiment, batch analysis on top of Smartsheet.

Plane

  • Official: makeplane/plane-mcp-server 100+ tools across ~19 modules. OAuth at mcp.plane.so/http/mcp, PAT at mcp.plane.so/http/api-key/mcp.

Basecamp

Backlog (Nulab)

Dart

  • Official: its-dart/dart-mcp-server Native MCP for Dart's AI-first PM platform. Tasks, docs, projects. (The local server is now deprecated in favor of Dart's hosted MCP.)

Fibery

  • Official: Fibery-inc/fibery-mcp-server Natural-language interaction with Fibery workspaces. Python. (This local server is deprecated; Fibery now hosts one at mcp.fibery.io/mcp.)

Taskade

  • Official: taskade/mcp Projects, tasks, workspaces, OAuth.

Notes

Notion

See Project management above.

Obsidian

For the Obsidian Tasks plugin specifically, jfim/obsidian-tasks-mcp parses both emoji and Dataview syntax directly from markdown, no REST API needed.

Logseq

  • ergut/mcp-logseq Hooks into Logseq's Local HTTP API, with optional vector search via local Ollama. DB-mode supported, tag-based privacy excludes work fine.
  • eugeneyvt/logseq-mcp-server Search/Get/Edit/Delete unified-tool architecture, template enforcement, soft-delete safety. Fewer tools, fewer ways to misfire.
  • joelhooks/logseq-mcp-tools TypeScript. Journal summaries, graph analysis, DataScript natural-language queries. Closest thing to a research assistant for your Logseq graph.

Roam Research

Apple Notes

  • sirmews/apple-notes-mcp Read-only: lists and searches by reading the Apple Notes SQLite database directly (needs Full Disk Access). No creating or editing. (Archived since late 2024.)
  • RafalWilinski/mcp-apple-notes Semantic search via a LanceDB vector store. The one to pick if you've been hoarding Notes for years and want to query them like a brain.

Bear

Airtable

  • domdomegg/airtable-mcp-server PAT-scoped, schema discovery, read/write, search, comments. Distributed via .mcpb (Claude Desktop extension), pre-listed in Anthropic's MCP Registry.
  • rashidazarang/airtable-mcp v4 with 42 tools: full CRUD, comments, schema, webhooks, batch ops, AI-prompt templates.
  • jordan-huffman/airtable-mcp-server Fixes the "everything is a string" gap of the popular forks: proper handling of single-select, date, formula, and checkbox fields.

Dev

GitHub Issues + Projects

  • Official: github/github-mcp-server ~29,200 stars; one of the most-starred MCP servers anywhere. Local binary, Docker, hosted remote variant. Watch out: the projects toolset is off by default. Flip GITHUB_TOOLSETS or --dynamic-toolsets.
  • taylor-lindores-reeves/mcp-github-projects Pre-dated official Projects support. Auto-generated GraphQL types and an ALLOWED_REPOS write-restriction list make it good for sprint workflows.
  • idosal/git-mcp Turns any GitHub repo into a doc/code source for retrieval. Not for issue management; the right tool for "what does library X actually do."

GitLab

  • Official: GitLab Duo's built-in MCP server Issue + MR creation and code search since GitLab 18.5; assignees, reviewers, labels, and milestones added in 18.8. Works on Cloud and self-managed.
  • zereight/gitlab-mcp The community wrapper to reach for when Duo isn't an option.
  • nguyenvanduocit/gitlab-mcp A lighter, more selective alternative; zereight's is the one with the broader API surface.

Bitbucket

  • Official (via Atlassian Rovo) PR lifecycle, pipelines, deployments, all in the same Atlassian server. API-token only; no Bitbucket OAuth.
  • b1ff/atlassian-dc-mcp Purpose-built for Atlassian Data Center, with OS-keychain secret storage. Separate @atlassian-dc-mcp/{jira,confluence,bitbucket} packages.
  • aashari/mcp-server-atlassian-bitbucket Generic-tool design: a few HTTP-method tools that hit any endpoint. Sister project to aashari's Jira server.

YouTrack

Redmine

  • runekaagaard/mcp-redmine Closest to 100% Redmine API coverage. ~172 stars, quiet since January 2026.
  • jztan/redmine-mcp-server 45 tools, every auth mode (API-key, Basic, OAuth2), prompt-injection protection, Docker. OAuth2 wants Redmine 6.1+.

Taiga

  • talhaorak/pytaiga-mcp Epics, user stories, tasks, issues, sprint tracking, verbosity controls. The Taiga server you'll actually keep installed.

OpenProject

Vikunja

  • 0xK3vin/vikunja-mcp 11 capability domains: kanban, relations, views, notifications, teams. The polished pick.
  • democratize-technology/vikunja-mcp API-token + JWT auth, smart hybrid filtering that falls back to client-side when the server can't help. Cleaner architecture than most.
  • aimbitgmbh/vikunja-mcp Safety controls (ENABLE_PROJECT_DELETE etc., default false because Vikunja has no trash). Tested with gpt-oss:20b if you're going local.

Generic / Self-Hosted

These don't wrap an external SaaS. They are the task system, designed for AI workflows from the start.

Back to Checking Boxes

I still abandon my TODO list. I'll ignore it for a week, miss a project, let it drift. The difference now is that catching up isn't a weekend of grunt work, it's a sentence: "here's what changed, sort it out." The list rebuilds itself, and I get back to doing the stuff I actually wanted to do.

,   &  Illya Starikov
AITechnology

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