Things3 Manager (Agent skill)

Manage tasks, projects, areas, headings, and tags in the Things3(https://culturedcode.com/things/) macOS app. The agent invokes a local CLI under the hood to list, search, create, or update Things items, or open them in Things.

What it does

• Lists Inbox/Today/Upcoming/Anytime/Someday/Logbook plus projects, areas, tags, headings.
• Searches by title/notes and supports advanced filters.
• Creates and updates todos/projects via the Things URL scheme.
• Opens lists or items directly in the Things app.

How it works (agent-driven)

• You ask in natural language (for example: "show my today list" or "add a task to call Alex tomorrow").
• The agent maps the request to read-only commands first, fetches results, and summarizes them.
• For writes (create/update/complete), the agent confirms exact changes before running them.
• The agent can open lists or items in Things via the URL scheme when asked.

Requirements

• macOS with Things 3 installed and opened at least once.
• In Things -> Settings -> General, enable "Enable Things URLs".

How to use

Example prompts:

• "Show my Today list"
• "Search for weekly review"
• "List projects in area Business"
• "Add a task: Book flights today, tag travel, checklist passport, charger"
• "Mark send contract with Henric to bank as done"

Manual CLI (optional)

If installed under a project at .codex/skills/things3-manager:

• bash .codex/skills/things3-manager/scripts/things --help
• bash .codex/skills/things3-manager/scripts/things inbox
• bash .codex/skills/things3-manager/scripts/things search "weekly review"
• bash .codex/skills/things3-manager/scripts/things add-todo --title "Book flights" --when today --tag travel --checklist "passport" --checklist "charger"

Where config/state is stored

Skill uses ideas from https://github.com/eugenepyvovarov/skill-boilerplate-skill to store config/data in common location for skills in current project folder.

This skill keeps all mutable state in a deterministic, git-ignorable location under your project root.

• project_root: the root of your project/repository (the place you would typically put your .gitignore).
• Skill data dir: <project_root>/.skills-data/things3-manager/
  • Env file: .skills-data/things3-manager/.env
  • Local tools: .skills-data/things3-manager/bin/ (prepend to PATH when needed)
  • Dependencies: .skills-data/things3-manager/venv/
  • Logs/cache/tmp: .skills-data/things3-manager/logs/, cache/, tmp/

Placement

This skill expects to live under <project_root>/.codex/skills/things3-manager so it can resolve the host project root and store .skills-data alongside the project. If you run it elsewhere, update the PROJECT_ROOT logic in scripts/things and scripts/setup.sh.

Safety (isolation)

By default, automation lives in scripts/ and should only write to:

• this repo folder (the skill root), and
• <project_root>/.skills-data/things3-manager/

Writes to Things happen via the Things URL scheme in the Things app.

CLI reference (optional)

• Lists: inbox, today, upcoming, anytime, someday, logbook, trash, recent
• Browsing: projects, areas, tags, headings, todos, tagged-items
• Search: search, search-advanced
• Writes: add-todo, add-project, update-todo, update-project
• Open: show, search-items

Attribution

CLI implementation is based on things_server.py, url_scheme.py, and formatters.py from https://github.com/hald/things-mcp.