`cdno action`

Manage a project’s next actions: add (optionally as a manifest note), promote a bullet to a note, complete, drop, and list.

cdno action [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Subcommands

Subcommand	Description
`add`	Append a next action to a project
`start`	Log that work on an action is starting
`promote`	Promote a plain bullet to a wikilinked manifest note
`complete`	Mark an action done by substring match
`drop`	Close an action without recording it as done
`list`	List a project’s open actions

Write subcommands honour --json ({path, message}, non-interactive); list emits its data under --json.

`cdno action add`

Append a next action to a project. --note also scaffolds a manifest note and wikilinks the bullet.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--title <TITLE>`	Action title.
`--energy <ENERGY>`	`deep`, `medium`, or `light`.
`--note`	Also create a manifest note alongside the bullet and wikilink it.
`--var <NAME=VALUE>`	Value for a custom action-note template’s prompted variable (`[variables.prompt]`). Repeatable. Only applies with `--note` (a plain bullet isn’t templated). See Prompted variables.

cdno action add --project surrogate-model --title "Profile the assembly step" --energy medium
cdno action add --project surrogate-model --title "Characterise sample efficiency" --energy deep --note

`cdno action promote`

Promote an existing plain bullet to a wikilinked manifest note. Substring-matches the bullet text; energy is inherited.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--query <QUERY>`	Case-insensitive substring of the bullet text.
`--var <NAME=VALUE>`	Value for a custom action-note template’s prompted variable (`[variables.prompt]`). Repeatable. Promotion scaffolds an action note, so it gathers the same prompts as `add --note`. See Prompted variables.

cdno action promote --project surrogate-model --query "profile the assembly"

`cdno action start`

Log that work on an action is starting: writes started [[slug]] — <bullet> to today’s daily note, which is what cdno now reads back.

The action must already be on the map. A start names a bullet, so that the later completion logs matching text and the focus clears — a start naming nothing could never be closed. What gets logged is the resolved bullet text, not your query, so --query "draft methods" logs Draft methods (deep).

cdno action promote is the one thing that breaks the pairing: it rewrites the bullet it matched, so promoting between a start and its close strands the focus for the rest of the day — cdno now keeps naming the old text and both complete and drop then match nothing. Close the action before promoting it, or re-run the start afterwards.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--query <QUERY>`	Substring of an existing bullet. Conflicts with `--unplanned`.
`--unplanned`	Start work that is on no map yet: adds the bullet, then starts it.
`--title <TEXT>`	Title for the new bullet. Requires `--unplanned`.
`--energy <LEVEL>`	`deep`, `medium` or `light`. Requires `--unplanned`.

An ambiguous --query is a question rather than a dead end: in a terminal you get a picker over the candidates, and non-interactively they are listed one per line. The same holds for complete, drop and promote, which resolve through the same matcher.

One case no picker can settle: two open bullets whose text differs only in case, or not at all. The domain’s whole-bullet tiebreak compares case-insensitively, so it sees two exact matches, declines, and picking either re-ambiguates. Edit one of the bullets to tell them apart.

# start something already planned
cdno action start --project surrogate-model --query "feature set B"

# start something that was never planned — adds the bullet and starts it
cdno action start --project surrogate-model --unplanned \
    --title "Fix the CI badge" --energy light

--unplanned is deliberately explicit rather than a fallback when --query matches nothing: a fallback would turn every typo into a new action, silently. --title and --energy require it, so passing them alone is a parse error naming --unplanned rather than a start on some other bullet.

`cdno action complete`

Mark a next action completed by case-insensitive substring match. A wikilinked bullet also archives its note to actions/_done/<year>/.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--query <QUERY>`	Substring of the bullet text.

cdno action complete --project surrogate-model --query "feature set B"

`cdno action drop`

Close a next action without recording it as done — for work that was superseded, abandoned or reprioritised. Matches the bullet exactly as complete does; a wikilinked bullet also archives its note to actions/_done/<year>/, stamped status: dropped with no completion date.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--query <QUERY>`	Substring of the bullet text.
`--reason <TEXT>`	Optional: why it was dropped.

cdno action drop --project surrogate-model --query "demo proposal" \
    --reason "superseded by the demo-planning action"

Use this rather than complete whenever the work was not actually performed. complete writes action done on [[…]] into the daily log, which is the record the weekly review, the monthly scan and every later verdict read back from — so completing something that never happened leaves the vault asserting work nobody did, and the only repair is a correction line written by hand.

--reason is optional but worth giving: “superseded by X” and “no longer wanted” are different facts, and only one of them tells a later reader to go looking for the replacement. It is recorded on a continuation line under the log entry.

A dropped action does not appear in the completed-actions views that the weekly and monthly reviews build, because it carries no completion date.

`cdno action list`

List a project’s open action bullets, with attached-note status (active / blocked / completed / dropped) inline when present. Honours --json.

Flag	Description
`--project <SLUG>`	Project slug.

cdno action list --project surrogate-model
cdno action list --project surrogate-model --json

add_action, promote_action, start_action, start_unplanned_action, complete_action, drop_action. (Open actions are also visible via get_project_context; what is currently started via current_focus.)

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