The morning planning ritual

The morning planning ritual is where you plan your day. On the Mac it takes over the window each morning: a calm, full-window flow, so deciding what matters is a deliberate moment rather than something you do scattered through a list.

The ritual is a Mac feature. On iPhone and iPad, Rymi is for reading and capture; there is no planning surface.

Open it

The ritual opens on its own the first time you use Rymi on a new day. The one exception is your very first day: a new install lands you in the app itself, free to look around before anything asks you to plan. The amber sun is already lit, so you can start the ritual whenever you are ready, and from the next day it greets you as usual.

You can also open it any time:

• Press ⇧⌘P
• Click the sun in the toolbar
• Choose Plan your day from the menu

These take you straight to the Plan beat. The inbox tidy is only ever reached by choosing it at the Threshold.

Until you have planned, the toolbar sun is tinted amber - a quiet nudge that persists through the day until you plan. Once you have planned it returns to its neutral colour. It still opens planning; it just stops asking.

The beats

Threshold

The ritual opens here on a new day: the date, and a few quiet facts about what is waiting - commitments carried over from yesterday, tasks due this week, new captures, and anything newly assigned to you. Only the lines that apply appear. When nothing is waiting, it says so.

From here you Begin planning, or - when there is something in your Inbox - Tidy inbox first, with the number of captures waiting beside it. Skip for now leaves the ritual.

Tidy your inbox

An optional stop on the way to planning, for clearing the Inbox one capture at a time. It is a detour, never a step: you reach it only by choosing it, and anything you skip still turns up as a candidate when you plan.

It exists because planning and processing are different questions. Planning compares - this task against the shape of your day. Processing is one thing at a time: what is this, and where does it go? A capture that is still just a scribble is not ready to be a commitment, and the tidy is where it becomes one.

One capture fills the screen: when you captured it, its title, and its project, deadline, and description - all of them editable right there. Beneath it, the number still to come and the next few titles, so you can see what is ahead. Four decisions:

• Today - commit to it
• Backlog - park it, still alive
• Archive - file it away. Archived, not completed: a capture was never a promise, so Rymi will not mark it done on your behalf
• Leave in Inbox - a real answer, not a dodge. It stays exactly as it is and meets you again when you plan

Setting a project, a deadline, or a description is not a decision about where the task goes, so it does not move you on - the capture stays in front of you, and the change is saved straight away even if you later discard the planning session. Press ⏎ for the full task panel if you need more room.

Changed your mind? ⌘Z steps back to the last capture and undoes what you decided. Nothing has been applied yet, so there is nothing to reverse.

⌘⏎ carries everything you decided through to the Plan beat. When the last capture is gone, one line remains - Inbox is clear - and the flow moves on to planning by itself a moment later. It is a fact, not a fanfare.

Plan

The working surface. On the left, a keyboard-navigable stream of everything you could do, grouped Due soon, New since you last planned, and Backlog. New captures from your Inbox surface here, so triage happens during planning rather than off to one side.

On the right, Today takes shape under a plum accent. Tasks you commit show a solid plum bar - a quiet mark of a promise, not a checkbox. Tasks carried over from before today look unsettled - a dashed ring and a muted title - inviting you to reaffirm them for today, defer them back to Backlog, or complete them. Untouched, they simply remain. The whole surface is keyboard-operable, so you can settle every row without reaching for the mouse.

To filter the stream, click type to filter in the header or just start typing; a teal field opens with a cursor, ready for a title or a #project.

If the day grows long, the Today column quietly tightens its rows rather than growing. That gentle crowding is the only signal; there is no warning and no cap.

The day

When you press Done, you land in the Today list you just built. There is no celebration screen - just the day, ready.

Tidy with the keyboard

• T commits the capture to Today
• B moves it to Backlog
• A archives it
• ↓ leaves it in Inbox
• P sets a project, D sets a deadline - neither moves you on
• ⇥ walks the card - title, project, deadline, description - and opens each as it lands; ⇧⇥ goes back, ⎋ leaves a field you are typing in
• ⏎ opens the full task panel; closing it returns you to the same capture
• ⌘Z undoes the last decision
• ⌘⏎ continues to planning
• ⎋ leaves the ritual

While you are typing a description, the single letters stop being shortcuts, so you can write freely.

Plan with the keyboard

• ↑ / ↓ move through the stream
• → or ⏎ commits the highlighted task to Today
• ← takes a task back out of Today (to Backlog)
• ⇥ switches between the stream and Today
• B sends an Inbox task to Backlog, or defers a carried-over task
• C completes a carried-over task
• Click type to filter, or just start typing, to filter by title or #project
• ⌘⏎ or Done commits the session
• ⎋ clears the filter, or discards the session

After each move, the cursor holds its place. Commit a task to Today, triage one to Backlog, or send a carried-over task off with ←, B, or C, and the highlight steps to the next task in the list rather than dropping away. So a run of → → → walks straight down the stream, committing as it goes, with no reach for the mouse. Keeping a carried-over task (→) leaves it in Today, so the cursor stays on it.

Done, or discard

Planning is a deliberate session. Nothing you decide - in the tidy or the Plan beat - is final until you press Done (⌘⏎): that commits everything you arranged and marks the day planned, and you land in the Today list you just built. (Projects, deadlines, and descriptions you set along the way are the exception; those save immediately.)

Press ⎋ to leave without committing. If you have made changes, Rymi asks first - Discard your planning? - so you never lose a plan by accident; choose Keep planning to carry on. Discarding restores Today exactly as it was when you opened the ritual. Today then persists, so what you committed to stays until you act on it.