Time Tracker

What it is

A built-in, off-by-default personal time tracker inside Omniscio. Press Start when you sit down to work and a live timer runs; press Start again (or Stop) and the block drops onto a colour-coded timeline for the day. Each block can be tagged, attributed to a tracker project, and marked billable, and a stats strip shows today / this-week / by-project totals plus today's billable dollar figure. Everything runs locally on your machine — no AI, no internet, no cost.

Where to find it

It's hidden until you enable it. Go to Settings → Lab and switch on Time Tracker. Once on, Time Tracker appears as a row in the sidebar (alongside the other integrations); click it to open the Today screen. It works like the other built-in virtual projects: the panel owns the whole area beside the projects sidebar, and it works on a phone too. (Under the hood it's gated through Omniscio's unreleased-feature registry — setting key timeTrackerEnabled, default false.)

How it behaves

The Today screen

• Start row — type what you're working on, optionally pick a project and toggle billable, then press Start. If a timer is already running, starting a new one automatically stops the previous block and logs it (one timer at a time).
• Running header — while a timer runs it shows the live elapsed time and a Stop button.
• Timeline — today's blocks, newest first, each showing its description, project, duration, tags, and a billable marker. Hover (or tap on mobile) a row to edit or delete it.
• Stats strip — today's total, this-week's total, and today's billable dollar amount, plus a per-project breakdown.
• Projects — each tracker project carries a colour, an hourly rate, a billable default, and an optional link to a real Omniscio project. You can create one inline from the Start row.

Money

You set an hourly rate on a project; entries store no dollar amount of their own. The billable figure is derived — hours on the clock × the project's rate — and rounded once per project when the stats are computed, so the totals never drift by a penny. The tracker's dollars are your own invoicing figures and are kept completely separate from Omniscio's AI-spend tracking.

The runaway-timer guard

If a timer has been running an unusually long time (for example you left it on overnight or across a restart), a banner appears so you can Keep it running, Stop it now (keeping the time so far), or Discard the runaway entry — instead of silently logging 14 hours.

Focus sessions (Pomodoro)

When you finish a Pomodoro focus session, it now shows up on this same timeline as a green focus block, so your focus time counts toward your today / week / billable totals right alongside your manual timers — no double entry. Your existing Pomodoro history is folded in the first time the tracker runs, and every new focus session appears automatically when it ends.

A few details worth knowing:

• The block's length is your actual focus time (the completed focus minutes), not the wall-clock span — the breaks in between aren't counted.
• If a focus run was attributed to an Omniscio project, the block is attributed to the tracker project you linked to that Omniscio project (otherwise it lands under Unassigned).
• It's a one-way copy made when the session ends: your Pomodoro timer keeps working exactly as before, and you can edit or delete a focus block on the timeline like any other entry — your changes stick.
• Finishing a focus session never interrupts a manual timer that happens to be running.

Plan vs. actual (planning ahead)

You can block out time you intend to spend before you do it, then see it against what you actually logged — on the same Today screen.

• Plan time — press Plan time in the Planned section and pick a project, an optional description, a start, and a duration. That planned block shows up as a distinct "ghost" row (with a calendar-clock icon and a Planned marker), so you never confuse it with time you actually logged.
• Plan vs. actual — a small readout shows, for the day and per project, your planned hours next to your actual hours and the variance (how far over or under your plan you are). Over/under is shown plainly — going over or under isn't "good" or "bad", it's just the gap.
• It's time only. Planned time never counts as real logged time and never affects your billable dollars — the billable figure is still derived only from the time you actually track. There's no "planned earnings" number.
• Plans and actuals stay separate. A plan doesn't turn into a logged entry — you keep both, so the comparison always makes sense. Edit or delete a plan from its row like any other entry.

Reports & export

A Reports tab (next to Today, same panel) rolls up the time you actually logged over a date range and lets you export it.

• Pick a range — Today, This week, This month, or a Custom start/end day. The range is read in your local time, exactly like the Today timeline, so days line up.
• See the summary — total hours, hours by project (with each project's billable dollars), and hours by tag. (A block with several tags counts toward each tag, so tag hours can add up to more than the total.)
• Export CSV — two buttons:
  • Summary CSV — one rollup sheet: a row per project (hours, billable hours, billable $) and a row per tag (hours), plus a total row.
  • Detail CSV — one row per logged entry (date, start, end, duration, project, tags, billable yes/no, description, note). It carries no dollar column — money is never a per-entry figure.
• The files download straight to your device (desktop and phone alike). Everything stays local — no network, no cost.

The money stays honest. The billable dollars in a report or export are derived once from your actual entries by the same calculation the Today stats strip uses — so a report can never disagree with what you see on Today, and it's the same figure to the penny. Planned time and unconfirmed entries never count toward a report's hours or dollars.

Safe to open in a spreadsheet. Exported cells that could be read as a spreadsheet formula (text starting with =, +, -, or @) are neutralized so opening the CSV in Excel or Sheets can't run anything.

Invoices & clients

An Invoices tab (next to Reports, same panel) turns your billable hours into a saved invoice document for a client.

• Clients — press Clients to add the people/companies you bill (a name, and optionally an email and address). A client's details are saved onto each invoice you make for them, so editing or removing a client later never changes an invoice you already created.
• Projects & rates — press Projects & rates to set each project's hourly rate, its billable default, and the client it bills to. (Projects are created on the Today screen; this is where you give them a rate and a client.) An invoice only includes projects that are linked to the chosen client.
• Create an invoice — press New invoice, pick a client and a date range (and an optional flat tax %). You'll see a live preview: one line per project with its hours and amount, a subtotal, tax, and total. Press Create to save it. It gets an invoice number (auto like INV-2026-0001, or type your own), a date, and starts as a Draft.
• View / status / export — open an invoice to see the document. Move it through Draft → Sent → Paid (in any order — it's your record). Export CSV downloads it. You can delete it (it's removed from the list).
• Drafts can be refreshed; finalized invoices are locked. While an invoice is a Draft you can press Regenerate to pick up time you logged after creating it. The moment you mark it Sent or Paid, its amounts are locked permanently — a later edit to your time entries can never change a finalized invoice. That's what makes it a trustworthy record.

The money stays honest here too. An invoice's amounts are computed from your actual billable entries by the exact same calculation as the Reports tab and the Today stats — so an invoice can never disagree with what you see elsewhere, to the penny. It's kept completely separate from Omniscio's own AI-spend tracking.

Auto-capture (suggested entries)

Off by default. If you'd rather not start and stop timers by hand, auto-capture can watch what you work on and suggest entries for you to review — so you barely touch a timer. Turn it on in the Review tab (next to Invoices): switch on Suggest entries from my activity.

• How it works — while it's on, Omniscio notices which app you're using and for how long, and turns each stretch of work into a suggested entry. Suggestions collect on the Review tab; nothing is logged for you automatically.
• You stay in control (confirm-first) — a suggestion is only a draft. It does not count toward your timeline, stats, billable dollars, reports, or invoices until you accept it. Accepting adds it to Today (where you can give it a project); Discard deletes it for good.
• What it records — the app name and how long you were in it, plus idle gaps. If you want more detail you can separately turn on Also capture window titles — a title can include a document or email subject, so it's a deliberate second opt-in, off by default. It never records your keystrokes, screen contents, clipboard, or documents; no screenshots, no page content, no browser URLs.
• Everything stays on your computer — captured activity is never uploaded, logged, sent to telemetry, or synced, and it isn't sent to your phone (auto-capture is desktop-only). Discarding a suggestion really deletes it, and any suggestion you don't act on is cleared automatically after 7 days.
• Tune it — set how long a gap of no activity ends a block (the idle threshold, default 5 minutes).
• Windows only for now — auto-capture runs on Windows in this version; elsewhere the Review tab simply won't collect suggestions.

Not in this version

This version is a manual tracker plus the Pomodoro focus bridge, plan-vs-actual planning, the reports/CSV export, the invoices/clients, and the opt-in auto-capture above. Recurring/repeating plans, reminders, a formatted PDF invoice/report, taking payment, automatic tax by region, multiple currencies, recurring invoices, emailing an invoice, and smarter auto-capture (categorising activity, macOS/Linux, per-tab detail) are planned follow-ups — the data model is shaped for them, but nothing drives them yet.

Privacy & cost

100% local. Your entries — and anything auto-capture records (app names, and window titles only if you opt in) — are saved only in Omniscio's local database; nothing is sent anywhere, logged, or synced, and no AI/network calls are made, so it costs nothing to use.

Limitations (this version)

Manual timers, the Pomodoro focus bridge, plan-vs-actual planning, range reports with CSV export, invoices/clients, and opt-in auto-capture (Windows-only, confirm-first, app-name + optional window-title only); no activity categorising, no macOS/Linux capture, no recurring/repeating plans, no reminders, no PDF, no payment/tax-by-region/multi-currency/recurring/emailing of invoices yet.

For agents

Under the hood (for agents)

• Schema — migration 20260718034022-add-time-tracker-tables-projects-tags-entries-entry-tags.ts: tracker_projects, tracker_tags, time_entries (the unified timeline — one row per block), entry_tags (junction). Money is an exact integer micro-USD column on the project rate (no float); non-negative triggers guard the rate + duration; source is a closed CHECK enum (manual / focus / planned / auto).
• DB layer — src/main/db/queries-time-tracker/index.ts: CRUD + the timer lifecycle (single-running auto-stop, duration clamped ≥ 0) + the today/week/ by-project stats with the derive-once billable math + runaway-timer detection.
• IPC — time-tracker:* channels (projects / tags / entries / running / stats / stale), typed + Zod-validated; every mutation emits time-tracker/changed so any client reloads.
• UI — src/renderer/src/features/time-tracker/
  • the Zustand store time-tracker-store.ts. TimeTrackerPanelHost is the panelOwnsLayout + mobilePrefersPanel Today screen.
• Focus bridge (Slice 2) — src/main/services/time-tracker/focus-session-bridge.ts observes the POMODORO_RUN_ENDED push + runs a startup reconcile, projecting completed Pomodoro runs into source='focus' entries. Idempotent + INSERT-ONLY on the focus_run_id link column (migration 20260718173857-…); resolves the run's Omniscio project → a tracker project via tracker_projects.amc_project_id. Read-only against Pomodoro (all I1–I8 hold).
• Plan vs. Actual (Slice 3) — planned blocks are reserved source='planned', is_confirmed=0 entries with a real start + end (so the existing timeline/stats/billable/timer queries skip them for free — no migration). DB: createPlannedEntry / updatePlannedEntry / deletePlannedEntry / listPlannedEntriesForDay / getPlanVsActual (variance, time only) in queries-time-tracker/index.ts. IPC: time-tracker:plan-* channels (create/update/delete + a plan-day read returning { planned, variance }). UI: PlanVsActualCard / PlannedEntryRow / PlanEditSheet on the same Today screen.
• Reports + Export (Slice 4) — a range rollup + CSV export, READ + FORMAT only (no migration). DB: getRangeReport(from,to) + listEntriesForRange(from,to) in queries-time-tracker/index.ts, reusing the exported derive-once billableMicroFor so a report's billable $ equals getTrackerStats to the micro-dollar (actual entries only; planned/unconfirmed/running excluded). Service: time-tracker-report.ts — local-midnight range resolution, a formula-injection-safe CSV builder, and the detail (no-$) / summary CSVs. IPC: time-tracker:report-get (read) + time-tracker:export-csv (returns { filename, csv } the renderer downloads via the shared downloadFile). UI: ReportsView on a SegmentedControl tab of TimeTrackerPanelHost. PDF export + a range plan-vs-actual roll-up were deferred.
• Invoices + Clients (Slice 5) — turns billable hours into an immutable invoice DOCUMENT. A NEW migration adds tracker_clients, tracker_projects.client_id, tracker_invoices, tracker_invoice_items (money as integer micro-USD + non-negative triggers + a finalized_at one-way-lock trigger). DB: queries-time-tracker-invoices.ts — buildInvoiceSnapshot REUSES getRangeReport's per-project billableMicroUsd (so an invoice can't disagree with Reports — agreement by construction), createInvoice persists the snapshot, regenerateInvoice recomputes a never-finalized draft (Model B), updateInvoiceMeta edits metadata only. Service: time-tracker-invoice.ts (the injection-safe invoice CSV). IPC: time-tracker:client-* + time-tracker:invoice-*. UI: InvoicesView + InvoiceCreateSheet / InvoiceDetailSheet / ClientManagerSheet / ProjectManagerSheet on a SegmentedControl tab. Payments, PDF, auto-tax, multi-currency, recurring, and emailing were deferred.
• Auto-capture (Slice 6) — a local, opt-in activity observer that PROPOSES confirm-first draft entries (no migration — source='auto' was reserved in Slice 1). A proposal is source='auto', is_confirmed=0, so it is invisible to the timeline/stats/billable/reports/invoices until accepted (identical to a plan). DB: createAutoProposal / listAutoProposals / confirmAutoProposal + hard-delete discardAutoProposal / deleteStaleAutoProposals (7-day retention) in queries-time-tracker/index.ts. The observer is a PURE segmenter activity-proposer.ts + the service activity-observer.ts (active window via get-windows activeWindow() + idle via powerMonitor on a createPeriodicTask poll; Windows-first; fail-open; never logs a title). Gated by a startup task + a live settings side-effect (reconcileActivityObserver) + a wired teardown. Settings timeTrackerAutoCaptureEnabled / timeTrackerAutoCaptureTitles / timeTrackerAutoCaptureIdleMinutes (all default-off/5). IPC: time-tracker:auto-list (read) + auto-confirm / auto-discard (mutations) — all three are web-access-denylisted (desktop-only) so captured activity never leaves the box. UI: ReviewView
  • ProposalRow on a "Review" SegmentedControl tab. Privacy is locked by two dedicated guards (no captured activity in logs / no egress sink; all channels denylisted).
• Mission Control bridge (hub-spoke #3) — links PM items to time entries so users can start/stop timers from a Mission Control item card's Time tab without switching panels. Migration adds pm_item_id + pm_item_name (denormalized labels-carry-entity-names pattern) to time_entries. DB: listEntriesForPmItem / getTotalTimeForPmItem (derive-once money) in queries-time-tracker/index.ts. IPC: time-tracker:pm-entries / time-tracker:pm-total (read-only, web-access-blocked). Bridge: 5 methods on window.__AMC_MISSION_CONTROL_SESSION__ (startTimerForItem / stopTimer / getRunningTimer / getTimeForItem / getEntriesForItem) installed by MissionControlPanel.tsx, exported by session-bridge.ts. UI: TimeTab.tsx (timer control + entries list + summary strip) + PM item name chip on TimelineEntryRow. All Time Tracker invariants (single-running, derive-once money, confirm-first) preserved — the bridge reuses the existing start/stop channels. Contract: pm-time-tracker-bridge-contract.md.
• Invariants — .claude/memory/contracts/time-tracker-contract.md (single-running, derive-once money, confirm-first, runaway guard, soft-delete, closed source enum, the focus-* projection invariants, the planned-* / plan-vs-actual-time-only invariants, the invoice-* money-agreement / snapshot-immutable / Model-B-lock invariants, and the auto-* local-only / minimal-capture / confirm-first / erasable-hard-delete invariants).

Related

Because the tracker deliberately reuses other surfaces, its closest neighbours are Pomodoro — whose finished focus sessions appear on the Time Tracker timeline as green focus blocks — and Mission Control and Time Tracker, which starts and stops timers from a PM item card's Time tab. The dollar figures it derives are its own invoicing numbers, kept separate from the AI-spend presented in Stats, and the Lab toggle that switches the whole feature on is described on Open settings.