`cdno project`

Manage project maps: create, update state, set the core question, add/complete/drop milestones, manage waiting-on items, park/activate, and list/show. Next actions have their own verb, cdno action.

cdno project [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Subcommands

Subcommand	Description
`create`	Create a new project map
`state`	Update the Current State (auto-logs the previous)
`core-question`	Set or clear the core question (auto-logs the previous)
`park`	Move a project to `_parked/`
`activate`	Bring a parked project back (enforces the cap)
`list`	List active projects
`show`	Show one project
`milestone`	Add / complete / drop milestones
`waiting`	Add / resolve waiting-on items

Write subcommands honour --json (a {path, message} result, run non-interactively); list/show emit their data under --json.

`cdno project create`

Create a new project map. Created parked if you’re already at the active cap.

Flag	Description
`--title <TITLE>`	Project title (the slug derives from it).
`--context <CONTEXT>`	Life domain: `work`, `side-project`, `university`, `family`, `household`, `legal`, `personal`.
`--question <QUESTION>`	Vault-relative core-question wikilink target (e.g. `questions/research/foo`). Optional.
`--var <NAME=VALUE>`	Value for a custom template’s prompted variable (`[variables.prompt]`). Repeatable. See Prompted variables.

cdno project create --title "Surrogate model" --context work
cdno project create --title "Thesis" --context university --var ticket=ABC-123
cdno project create --title "Thesis" --context university --question questions/research/surrogate-cost

`cdno project state`

Update the Current State section. The previous state is auto-logged to today’s daily note first (see Business rules).

Flag	Description
`--slug <SLUG>`	Project slug.
`--text <TEXT>`	The new state text.

cdno project state --slug surrogate-model --text "Mesh scaling works; assembly is the bottleneck"

`cdno project core-question`

Set or clear the project’s core question after creation, auto-logging the previous value to today’s daily note in the same was: / now: shape state uses.

core-question — --slug, and either --question <target> or --clear

cdno project core-question --slug surrogate-model --question questions/research/does-it-scale
cdno project core-question --slug surrogate-model --clear

--question takes the bare wikilink target, the same form create --question takes — questions/research/foo, not [[…]], which is rejected rather than double-wrapped.

Passing neither flag non-interactively is an error, not a silent detach: dropping a project’s question is a decision and has to be asked for.

`cdno project park`

Move an active project to projects/_parked/, freeing a slot against the five-project cap.

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

cdno project park --slug surrogate-model

`cdno project activate`

Bring a parked project back. Fails if it would exceed the active cap — park another first.

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

cdno project activate --slug surrogate-model

`cdno project list`

List active projects with a state snippet. Each project renders as a card — a coloured bar keyed to its context, the slug as a title, and the state wrapped underneath. Honours --json.

In a terminal this then offers to open one of the projects it just listed, printing the same thing cdno project show would and asking again until you press Esc. Piped output, --no-interactive, and --json skip the prompt. See Colour and interactivity.

cdno project list
cdno project list --json | jq '.[].slug'
cdno project list --no-interactive     # listing only, never a prompt

`cdno project show`

Show a compact summary of a single project (any status). The slug is an optional positional: omit it in a terminal and cdno offers a picker covering active and parked projects. Honours --json (emits the project summary object).

cdno project show surrogate-model
cdno project show                      # pick from a list
cdno project show surrogate-model --json

`cdno project milestone`

Manage milestones — markers of progress. A --hard milestone is a real deadline counted in cdno commitments.

add — --slug, --title, --date <YYYY-MM-DD> (optional), --hard done — --slug, --query (case-insensitive substring of the milestone title)

drop — --slug, --query, --reason (optional)

cdno project milestone add --slug surrogate-model --title "Submit to ICML" --date 2026-01-22 --hard
cdno project milestone add --slug surrogate-model --title "All Round-1 replies received"
cdno project milestone done --slug surrogate-model --query "submit to icml"
cdno project milestone drop --slug surrogate-model --query "book the venue" --reason "the funder withdrew"

Use drop rather than done when the milestone is not going to happen — superseded, mis-typed, or overtaken by events. done ticks the bullet and writes milestone done on ... to the daily log, asserting a milestone that was met; drop removes the bullet and writes milestone dropped on ... instead, so a later reader can tell a plan that changed from a plan that was kept. --reason is optional and never prompted for: a correction is simply a drop with no reason. Only open - [ ] bullets are matched — a completed milestone is a record of what happened, not a plan to revise.

--date is optional. Some milestones are gated by a condition rather than a date — “all Round-1 replies received” on a correspondence-driven project — and omitting the flag records the milestone as target: TBD rather than making you invent an estimate. An undated milestone does not appear in cdno commitments, which is the point: a date you made up reads later like a commitment somebody made. It completes with done exactly like a dated one.

Interactively, the calendar is offered behind a yes/no so the undated case is reachable without knowing the flag can be omitted.

--hard requires --date: a hard deadline with no date is rejected rather than quietly downgraded to a soft target.

`cdno project waiting`

Track external blockers.

add — --slug, --description resolve — --slug, --query (substring of the item)

cdno project waiting add --slug surrogate-model --description "Cluster quota from IT"
cdno project waiting resolve --slug surrogate-model --query "cluster quota"

create_project, update_project_state, park_project, activate_project, list_projects, get_project_context, add_milestone, complete_milestone, set_core_question, add_waiting_on, resolve_waiting_on.

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