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Task Orbit is a predictive workflow orchestrator that syncs your team’s asynchronous signals—emails, chat threads, calendar blocks, and pull requests—into a single, evolving priority map. Unlike manual Kanban tools, Task Orbit watches the gravitational pull of your deadlines and dependencies, then automatically re-ranks work items so you always focus on the task with the highest collaborative inertia.
Most task managers are digital filing cabinets. You put work in, you take work out, but the filing cabinet never tells you which drawer is on fire. Task Orbit treats your workload like a living ecosystem. It reads the "weather" of your communication channels—urgency in a Slack message, a rescheduled meeting, a stalled CI pipeline—and adjusts your backlog before you even know there is a storm coming.
Core Philosophy: Reflexive prioritization over manual triage. Stop sorting; start shipping.
- Context Switching Burnout: Teams waste 20% of their week re-prioritizing the same five tasks.
- Signal Blindness: Critical updates buried in email threads or passive-aggressive reminder bots.
- Integration Overload: "Let me check Jira. Oh, it’s not there. Let me check Linear. Let me check Slack. Let me check my calendar." - Stop. Task Orbit watches all of them.
- Autonomous Signal Ingestion: Watches email (IMAP), Slack (Events API), Google Calendar, Linear, and Jira. It reads, writes, and moves cards as work evolves.
- Priority Gravity Engine: Uses a weighted algorithm (deadline proximity, assigned stakeholder, cross-repo dependency count) to calculate the urgent mass of each task.
- Local-First Architecture: Your data lives on your device. No cloud vendor lock-in. Sync happens over IPFS or a reliable bridge of your choice.
- Claude Cowork Reinforcement: Leverages the Live API for natural language summarization of why a task moved up or down the board.
- Responsive Web UI & CLI: Manage tasks via a dark-mode web dashboard or a terminal command (
task-orbit next). - Multilingual + 24/7 Agent Log: The background agent runs on your machine, watching for triggers in any language (English, Spanish, Japanese, etc.). The log interface provides round-the-clock visibility into changes.
graph TD
A[Incoming Signal<br>Email / Slack / Jira] --> B(Signal Parser)
B --> C{Urgency Detector}
C -->|High Priority| D[Priority Queue Inbox]
C -->|Low Priority| E[Backlog Buffer]
D --> F[Local Database<br>SQLite/IPFS]
F --> G[Priority Gravity Engine]
subgraph "Orbit Calculation"
G --> H{Weighted Scoring}
H --> I[Deadline Closeness]
H --> J[Stakeholder Load]
H --> K[Cross-Repo Links]
end
I --> L[Tier 1: Critical Orbit]
J --> L
K --> L
L --> M[UI / CLI Update]
M --> N[Claude Cowork Summary<br>"Task X moved up due to meeting overlap"]
style F fill:#f9f,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
style G fill:#bbf,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
style M fill:#bfb,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
Configure your autonomous watchers in orbit.config.json. This tells Task Orbit which channels to observe:
{
"watch": {
"email": {
"imap_server": "imap.gmail.com",
"label": "URGENT"
},
"slack": {
"channels": ["#engineering", "#security-alerts"],
"keyword_triggers": ["blocked", "ASAP", "release tomorrow"]
},
"linear": {
"team_key": "ENG"
},
"jira": {
"project": "PRIORITY",
"status_filters": ["In Progress", "In Review"]
},
"calendar": {
"attendees": ["product-lead@company.com"],
"event_type": "sync"
}
},
"gravity_presets": {
"deadline_weight": 0.6,
"stakeholder_weight": 0.3,
"dependency_weight": 0.1
}
}Task Orbit listens. It does not ask for permission. It asks for the config file.
Once your profile is configured, run the agent from your terminal. The console becomes the command bridge for your autonomous task manager.
# Start the watcher daemon
task-orbit daemon --config ./orbit.config.json
# Ask for the next three most critical tasks
task-orbit next --count 3
# Output
# [CRITICAL] 001: Fix SSO Authentication Bug (Moved up: Slack alert @channel)
# [NORMAL] 002: Update API Documentation (Moved down: blocking PR was merged)
# [WATCH] 003: Investigate Payment Gateway latency (New: Jira ticket created by Ops)| Operating System | Status | Emoji Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| macOS (Ventura +) | Full Support (Daemon + GUI) | 🟢 |
| Ubuntu/Debian (22.04 +) | Full Support (CLI + Systemd Service) | 🟢 |
| Windows 11 (WSL2 required) | Supported (CLI only) | 🟡 |
| Fedora (38 +) | Supported (CLI only) | 🟢 |
| FreeBSD | Experimental (Watcher only) | 🟠 |
| iOS / Android | Remote View (Web UI only) | 🔵 |
Task Orbit is built to work without pulling data to third-party servers, but its intelligence engine optionally plugs into Large Language Models to explain priority shifts.
- Claude Cowork Live API: Used to generate a human-readable summary for every task movement. Example: "Priority of 'Refactor Payment Module' increased by 5 points because the Slack channel #billing received a complaint from a major account." ✅
- OpenAI API: Used when the user wants deeper semantic analysis of email sentiment or task description ambiguity. Configuration key:
"llm_provider": "openai"in the config file. - 2026 Vision: By 2026, Task Orbit will support a hybrid LLM routing system, where sensitive tasks stay local (using a small on-device model) while complex summarizations are sent to the cloud.
You do not need a cloud account to run Task Orbit. You need a machine and the ability to edit a JSON file.
- Download the binary →
- Unzip the archive to your preferred directory (
/usr/local/binorC:\Tools). - Create an
orbit.config.json(see example above). - Run
task-orbit daemon --config ./orbit.config.json. - Open your browser to
http://localhost:3000to see the live priority map.
No accounts. No sign-up. No data leaving your machine until you explicitly enable the LLM bridge.
This project is licensed under the MIT License. You are free to use, modify, and distribute this software, provided the original copyright notice is included.
Note on Image Sources: This document does not rely on external image hosting services (e.g., imgur.com). All visual representations (badges, diagrams) are generated via text-based markdown or Mermaid syntax, ensuring repository portability and zero external dependencies.
Task Orbit is an autonomous orchestrator, not a human replacement. It observes signals and makes recommendations. Final decision authority always rests with the team lead or the designated responsible person.
- Privacy: Task Orbit does not send your raw emails or messages to any external server unless you explicitly connect an LLM provider. You control the bridge.
- Beta Stability: The watcher daemon is considered stable for production usage on macOS and Ubuntu. Windows support is currently in active development (2026 target: native Windows daemon).
- "The Butler Effect": If you configure Task Orbit to watch too many channels, the priority engine may become too sensitive, moving cards based on minor signal noise (e.g., a cat gif in a Slack channel flagged "urgent"). We call this the Butler Effect. Adjust your keyword triggers to avoid this.
We welcome contributions. If you want to add a new signal watcher (e.g., Teams, Discord, Basecamp), open a pull request.
- 24/7 Watcher Log: The daemon logs every decision to
~/.orbit/logs/events.json. Check this file if you wonder why a task moved. - Responsive UI: The web interface adapts to mobile, tablet, and desktop screen sizes. Full multilingual support in the UI (English, Spanish, German, Japanese) is targeted for Q4 2026.
Task Orbit — Stop chasing the work. Let the work orbit you.