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Labels help you categorize and organize your thoughts, making it easier to find related items and manage different areas of your life. Think of labels as tags that group similar thoughts together.

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Why use labels?

Labels are useful for:
  • Context switching: Quickly filter thoughts by work, personal, or project-specific topics
  • Organization: Keep related thoughts grouped together
  • Focus: View only the thoughts relevant to your current task
  • Workflow management: Separate different types of thoughts (ideas, tasks, reminders)
Start with a few broad categories and add more specific labels as needed. Common starting labels include: work, personal, ideas, and urgent.

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Adding labels to thoughts

1

Add a thought with a label

Use the -l or --label flag when adding a new thought:
timo add Buy groceries -l errands
The label is attached to the thought and stored in the database alongside the content.
2

Add thoughts without labels

Labels are optional. You can add thoughts without labels:
timo add Remember to call mom
This thought won’t have a label but will still appear in general list and search results.
3

Verify your thought was added

List all thoughts to see the one you just added:
timo list -s
The -s or --show-labels flag displays labels in the output with a colored tag.

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Filtering by labels

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List thoughts with a specific label

View only thoughts that match a particular label: 
timo list -l work
This displays only thoughts tagged with the work label. 
timo list -l work -s
Shows all work-related thoughts with labels visible

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Search within a specific label

Combine search keywords with label filtering: 
timo search meeting -l work
This searches for “meeting” only within thoughts labeled as work.
When you filter by label, Timo performs an exact match on the label name. The label work won’t match thoughts labeled Work or work-related.

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Viewing labels in output

By default, labels are hidden in the output to keep things clean. Use the -s or --show-labels flag to see them: 
timo list -s
Labels appear as colored tags next to each thought: 
[1]: Buy groceries  #errands
[2]: Finish report  #work
[3]: Call dentist  #personal
The same flag works with search: 
timo search important -s

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Real-world label examples

Separate different work contexts:
timo add Review pull requests -l code-review
timo add Team meeting at 2pm -l meetings
timo add Update documentation -l docs
timo add Deploy staging environment -l devops
Later, focus on specific work:
timo list -l code-review
Track different areas of your personal life:
timo add Buy milk and eggs -l errands
timo add Dentist appointment Tuesday -l health
timo add New project idea: recipe app -l ideas
timo add Pay electricity bill -l bills
Check what errands you need to run:
timo list -l errands
Manage multiple projects:
timo add Implement user authentication -l project-alpha
timo add Design landing page mockup -l project-alpha
timo add Research competitor pricing -l project-beta
timo add Schedule client demo -l project-beta
Focus on one project:
timo list -l project-alpha -s
Use labels to indicate priority:
timo add Fix critical production bug -l urgent
timo add Refactor old code -l low-priority
timo add Respond to client email -l urgent
timo add Update team wiki -l low-priority
Focus on urgent items:
timo list -l urgent -s
Track learning across different topics:
timo add Study Rust ownership concepts -l learning-rust
timo add Practice SQL joins -l learning-sql
timo add Read chapter 5 of design patterns book -l learning-design
timo add Watch conference talk on microservices -l learning-architecture
Review what you’re learning:
timo list -l learning-rust

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Label best practices

Keep labels lowercase

Use lowercase for consistency: work instead of Work

Use hyphens for multi-word labels

Avoid spaces: code-review instead of code review

Start broad, then specialize

Begin with general categories, add specific ones as needed

Limit the number of labels

Too many labels can become overwhelming. Start with 5-10 core labels
If you find yourself using the same label repeatedly, consider creating a shell alias:
alias tw="timo add -l work"
alias tp="timo add -l personal"
Then simply use: tw Finish the report

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Technical implementation

Labels are stored as optional string fields in the SQLite database. When you add a thought with a label, it’s saved in the tasks table:
  • Without label: INSERT INTO tasks (content) VALUES (?)
  • With label: INSERT INTO tasks (content, label) VALUES (?, ?)
Filtering by label uses exact string matching in SQL WHERE clauses. See the implementation in src/sqlite/sqlite_storage.rs:60-73 for search and src/sqlite/sqlite_storage.rs:85-95 for list operations.

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