OpenTime/Overview

Overview

A universal, human-readable format for your goals, tasks, habits, reminders, events, appointments and projects.

OpenTime is a new plain-text standard designed to bring clarity and ownership to the way you manage your time.

Where Markdown made your thoughts portable, OpenTime makes your schedule portable — across apps, devices, platforms, and decades.

Why OpenTime Exists

Most productivity tools lock your data inside their system. Your tasks live in one app, your habits in another, your schedule somewhere else — and none of them speak a shared language.

Even when they claim to “sync,” you're still stuck inside someone else's worldview.

OpenTime changes that by giving you:

  • A single format for everything: goals, tasks, habits, reminders, events, appointments, and projects
  • Plain-text files you own locally (.ot)
  • Total portability between apps who are open enough to adopt a standard, or accept a standard at all
  • No vendor lock-in
  • Future-proof, human-readable data

Your time should belong to you — not to the tools you use.

What Makes OpenTime Different

Human-readable

You can open an .ot file in any text editor. It makes sense at a glance.

App-agnostic

Any app can read or write OpenTime. No licenses. No restrictions. Just YAML.

Extensible

Apps can add their own x_* fields without breaking the standard.

Local-first

Your data starts with you — not a server.

Round-trip safe

Nothing gets lost when moving between apps.

Built for the next decade

Supports recurring habits, flexible tasks, time windows, and deep metadata.

Next Steps