Zeit (German: time) + Hero (English) = Zeitro — become the hero of your own time.

A gamified countdown task tracker that weaponizes Parkinson's Law against itself.

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." — C. Northcote Parkinson, 1955

Give yourself a week to write a report that takes two hours, and you'll spend the full week on it. The task doesn't get better — it just takes longer. You overthink, procrastinate, and fill the extra time with low-value work.

This isn't laziness. It's how the human brain works. Without a visible, ticking constraint, there's no urgency signal. Your brain treats distant deadlines as abstract — "I still have time" — until suddenly you don't.

Most task managers show deadlines as static dates. "Due Friday" feels the same on Monday and Thursday until panic hits.

Zeitro flips this. Every task has a live T-minus countdown ticking backwards in real time. Watching T- 1d 23h 04m 30s shrink creates urgency that a calendar date never will. This exploits several cognitive mechanisms:

1. Live countdown, not static dates — Every task shows a T-minus timer ticking in real time. "Due Friday" becomes T- 2d 14h 30m 12s — and it's shrinking.
2. Financial stakes (even fake ones) — Earn rupees for completing tasks on time. Lose them every 12 hours when overdue. Fake stakes, real motivation.
3. Visible work logging — Hit play when you work, stop when you pause. See exactly how many hours you've invested — making sunk cost work in your favor.
4. Tighter feedback loops — Habits get daily check-ins. Tasks get countdowns. Analytics show patterns. The shorter the loop, the harder it is for Parkinson's Law to operate.
5. Pomodoro focus blocks — 25-minute sprints with a visible circular timer. You can't expand work to fill the time when the time is 25 minutes and counting.

This isn't a theory project. It's a tool built to solve a personal problem: finishing things on time.

• Live T-minus countdown — Every task shows a ticking countdown to deadline

• Work session logging — Open a task card, hit play to track time spent working

• Pomodoro timer — Circular progress ring, 25/50/custom minute focus sessions with audio alert

• Gamification — Earn rupees for completing tasks, lose rupees for missing deadlines

• Penalty system — Overdue tasks auto-deduct currency every 12 hours

• Habit tracking — Daily/weekly/monthly habits with GitHub-style year dot grid heatmap

• Analytics — Task stats, hours worked, currency flow, tag breakdown, weekly view, habit streaks

• Task notes — Add notes to any task

• Search, filter, sort — Find tasks by title, filter by status, sort by deadline/priority/created

• Duplicate tasks — Clone any task with one click

• Tags — Categorize tasks with colored labels

• Settings — Edit profile, change password, export data, delete account

• Auth — User accounts with JWT cookie-based authentication

• Dark/light mode — Toggle between themes, preference saved to server

• Grid & list view — Toggle between card grid and compact list on dashboard

• PWA — Installable on Android and desktop, works offline for cached data

• Responsive — Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile

• API-first — Full REST API, frontend is decoupled from backend

• Dockerized — Single docker compose up runs everything

• Habit backfill — Click past dates in the dot grid to mark as done (with late penalty)

• Missed habit penalties — Auto-deduct currency for missed daily habits

• Docker and Docker Compose v2
• Git

git clone https://github.com/krisk248/zeitro.git
cd zeitro
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:3000, create an account, start tracking.

To use a different port:

ZEITRO_PORT=4000 docker compose up -d

cd backend
uv sync                                    # install dependencies
uv run alembic upgrade head                # create database
uv run uvicorn app.main:app --reload       # start API on :8000

cd frontend-svelte
npm install                                # install dependencies
INTERNAL_API_URL=http://localhost:8000 npm run dev  # start on :5173

cd backend
uv run pytest tests/ -v                    # 80 tests

zeitro/
├── backend/                    # FastAPI application
│   ├── app/
│   │   ├── auth/               # Authentication (fastapi-users)
│   │   ├── db/                 # Database engine, base model
│   │   ├── models/             # SQLAlchemy models
│   │   ├── routers/            # API endpoints
│   │   ├── schemas/            # Pydantic request/response models
│   │   └── services/           # Business logic (gamification, penalties)
│   ├── alembic/                # Database migrations
│   ├── tests/                  # pytest test suite
│   └── Dockerfile
├── frontend-svelte/            # SvelteKit application (primary)
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── routes/             # Pages (dashboard, auth, analytics, habits, settings, task detail, about)
│   │   ├── lib/components/     # UI components
│   │   ├── lib/                # API client, auth store, utilities
│   │   └── hooks.server.ts     # API proxy
│   └── Dockerfile
├── frontend/                   # Next.js application (frozen, legacy)
├── docker-compose.yml          # Container orchestration
├── design.md                   # Design system tokens and guidelines
└── CONTEXT.md                  # AI coding context (for vibe coding)

• Live T-minus countdown cards
• Task CRUD with tags, priorities, and notes
• Task search, filter by status, sort by deadline/priority/created
• Task duplicate
• Grid and list view toggle
• Work session time tracking (manual + pomodoro)
• Pomodoro timer with circular progress ring and audio alert
• Gamification (earn/lose virtual currency)
• Auto-penalty for overdue tasks (every 12 hours)
• Habit tracking with daily/weekly/monthly cadence
• Year dot grid heatmap (GitHub-style) for habits
• Habit streaks and backfill past dates with late penalty
• Missed habit penalties (auto-deduct for yesterday)
• Analytics dashboard (summary, daily, weekly, tag breakdown, habit stats)
• Auth (login/signup/logout, registration toggle)
• Settings (profile, tags, change password, export data, delete account)
• About page (Parkinson's Law, Zeitro etymology)
• Dark/light mode (server-persisted preference)
• Toast notifications for all actions
• PWA (installable on Android and desktop)
• Docker containerization
• SvelteKit frontend rewrite (migrated from Next.js)
• Security hardening (rate limiting, input validation, CSRF)
• GitHub Actions CI/CD (GHCR images)
• 80 unit tests + E2E suite

• Goals & Aims (link tasks/habits to long-term goals)
• Daily journal with mood tracking
• Sleep tracking with productivity correlation
• Weekly review auto-generated dashboard
• Focus score (daily composite metric)
• Expense tracking
• Recurring tasks
• Push notifications for approaching deadlines

See CONTEXT.md for architecture details and coding conventions to get started.

MIT