Todoist + Claude: A Brilliant AI-Powered To-Do System

I'm using Claude.ai as a frontend for Todoist via MCP. It's the best to-do setup I've had.

My daily prompt: "What is the current date and time? Load today's tasks from Todoist and give me an updated suggested to-do list for today."

From there, I can talk to my to-do list. "I did the dishes." "Move that task to next week." "Prioritize my list." Claude handles it all—checking things off, adding tasks, reordering priorities.

Todoist is the backend. Even on the free tier, it's powerful: recurring tasks, future dates, labels. But the magic is the AI layer on top.

For years, productivity folks have chased the self-organizing to-do list. Mark Forster's Autofocus system. David Allen's GTD. Michael Linenberger's methods. I tried them all. The dream was always the same: a list that tells you what to do next without you having to think about it.

AI actually delivers this. Claude can intelligently prioritize based on context, deadlines, and what I've told it matters. No paper shuffling. No manual sorting.

Setup requires a custom MCP server since Todoist isn't a built-in Claude integration. Ask Claude how to configure it—took me about 10 minutes.

Settling on Claude

I've settled on Claude as my subscription AI of choice. I use Claude Code for programming so I'm pretty familiar with it. I was using ChatGPT but I don't like its rumoured upcoming erotic mode. Claude's company Anthropic has an on-staff philosopher which gives me some confidence that they will do the right thing. I like how Anthropic will be profitable soon while OpenAI seems to be getting into a lot of debt.

Claude can't do image generation so for that I will need to rely on Gemini or ChatGPT.

Customizing the Omarchy screensaver

 I love how you can change the Omarchy screensaver by editing a text file.

The text file:

For reference, the Omarchy font (used here as well) is https://patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=display&f=Delta+Corps+Priest+1&t=DADA&x=none&v=4&h=4&w=80&we=false

YubNub Upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04

I just finished migrating YubNub from Ubuntu 12.04 (yes, from 2012!) to Ubuntu 24.04. The site is now running on modern infrastructure with PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.0, and HTTPS.

Server and website configuration isn't my main skillset, so I used Claude Code to guide me through the entire process. It helped with everything from Apache configuration to SSL certificate setup to handling MySQL strict mode issues with legacy data.

The migration went smoothly with zero downtime during the DNS cutover. AI really shines for this kind of work - it's like having a sysadmin sitting next to you.

I wrote up the deployment process and committed it to the repo: https://github.com/JonathanAquino/yubnub/blob/master/DEPLOYMENT.md

Omarchy window management cheatsheet/infographic

 Here's a handy cheatsheet i generated in Gemini Nano Banana for Omarchy window management.

Trying out Omarchy Linux with Claude Code

I'm really liking this Linux desktop (Omarchy distro). I'm new to Linux desktops so I use Claude Code to make the changes I need. i used AI to customize the taskbar (Waybar) to have virtual-desktop names beside the numbers and a custom date and time format. AI is a great fit for Linux desktops because all the configs are in text files and accessible to Claude Code.

Improved Comic Code Reviews

Here's how to generate a cool The Far Side-like comic panel that you can put at the top of your Github PRs.

1. In Claude Code: Plan a 1-panel The Far Side-like comic strip to help code reviewers to understand what is going on/how PR 2888 works. Anthropomorphize if that will help. Use humor if appropriate. Copy the contents  to the clipboard.

At the top, put "Make a 1-panel The Far Side-like comic-strip jpg for this:" as I am going to feed it into an LLM.

2. Paste the clipboard contents into gemini.google.com for it to generate the image.

I quite like the Iosevka font for terminal

 

In this picture it is on the Zellij multiplexer in an Alacritty window.

This is how I view the top AI models

 

Comic Code Reviews

1. Paste this into Claude Code or Cursor: “Review PR 13968 (this branch). Plan a comic strip to help code reviewers to understand what is going on/how the code works. Anthropomorphize if that will help.”
2. Paste what you get into gemini.google.com after this prompt: “Make a comic-strip jpg for this: <paste it here>” 

This example is from React #13968 – the initial hooks implementation.

Switching to lighter apps (and cool things about the Orion browser)

Cursor, iTerm2, and Edge/Arc/Zen were taking up a lot of memory on my MacBook, so I am going on a bit of a memory diet and switching to lighter apps:

• Instead of Cursor which is Electron-based: Zed, which is written in Rust and should be faster.
• Instead of iTerm2, Alacritty + tmux. Alacritty is a single-window terminal, so I need tmux to handle the tabs. At first I was a bit scared of tmux but now I kind of like it - it's fun to play around with and customize.
• Instead of Edge, Orion which is Webkit-based (by the makers of the Kagi search engine). Working out so far. Supposed to use less memory than Chrome.

Things I'm noticing about the Orion browser

• Having separate dock icons for different profiles (Work and Personal) seems good
  
  
  

• There is a bug with Open external links in: Last Active Profile - seems to open the first profile that was opened rather than the last profile that was active. You can choose which profile to open by clicking the appropriate dock icon.
• The vertical tabs are threaded.hierarchical - opening a tab from a webpage opens a page under the current tab. It's interesting - haven't seen that before. 

• To get the new-tab shortcut (⌘-T) to put your cursor in the address bar so you can type something immediately, set New tabs open with: Empty Page
• When it prompts to ask if a website should access my location, one of the options is Never For This Website, which is useful and something I haven't seen in other browsers

• I believe for each extension you have the option to set which sites it is enabled for, which is nice
• On a pinned tab, to reset to the pinned URL, use Cmd+click.
• You can right-click a page and choose Summarize. A pane will appear on the right with a summary. If you move to a different page and want to summarize that, click the Summarize button on the lower right of the pane.

• Tabs show a thumbnail preview when you hover over them:

• It has a way to create a dedicated app for a website (Tools > Install This Site as an App)

Things I'm noticing about the Orion browser for iOS

• Orion for iOS has vertical tabs, which is space-saving

• The iOS app has so many configuration options - it's great

• The iOS app is the first iOS browser I've seen that lets you in tall Chrome and Firefox extensions? I haven't tried this though. 

Things I'm noticing about Alacritty

• The colors were a bit washed out. Fixed by switching to the xterm theme: import = ["~/.config/alacritty/themes/themes/xterm.toml"]

Things I love using my command-line AI tool for

Here I am going to build a list of things I love using my command-line AI tool for - I use Amazon Q Developer CLI:

• Resolving merge conflicts
• Making a ChatGPT prompt to tell me what I need to do today. It pulls events from Google Calendar (via ChatGPT Google Calendar integration), todos from Todoist (via Todoist API), and todos from Streaks iOS app (via Mac Shortcut)
• Committing and creating a PR in one step using this prompt: create a branch with an appropriate name (don't use a slash; the Jira ticket is <Jira ticket number goes here>), commit, push, use gh to make a pr (follow any pull_request_template.md files), give me a 1-liner I can paste into Slack (like "PR to foo the bar: https://github.com/SemanticSugar/sludge/pull/3174") then open the pr in a browser. At the bottom of the pr description, put: Made with ❤️ with Amazon Q Developer CLI
• Figuring out if I need to water the lawn this week using this prompt: replace month and year in this URL https://www.flowworks.com/network/rainfallstats/statsopen.aspx?externalRequest=surreyrain&siteid=32&sitefullname=Surrey%20Municipal%20Hall&measid=1226&month=6&year=2025 and use curl to figure out how much it rained in Surrey in the past week in inches
• Code review a PR using this prompt: Review PR <PR number goes here> (<branch name goes here> branch). Use gh to check the PR description and comments for context. Are there any bugs or inconsistencies?
• Understand a PR using this prompt: for the PR, show me the changes in this PR and annotate them line-by-line or every few lines to help me to understand the changes (except for the test code). Feel free to rearrange the order of the code if that would tell a better story. Prefix any comments you add with Q:
• Create a Jira ticket for a problem: <paste Slack conversation here> make a jira title and description, save it in ~/Junk/jira.md, and open it in cursor
• Summarize current chat and save it to a file: Today is {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD} Choose a descriptive filename that I can use to save the context of this conversation as - something like /Users/jonaquino/Documents/AI_Conversations/2025-07-23-foo-bar-baz.md. Use today's date. Save a summary of this conversation to that file.
• When I'm on-call at work, I have Amazon Q Developer CLI connected by MCP to PagerDuty and to our company wiki (Confluence), so I can ask things like:
• what are my pagerduty incidents?
• check if the success file is there now
• any runbooks in confluence about this issue?
• check ~/projects/udp to see if there is a DAG for AttributionsLinkedin
• recheck if the s3 file is there now

Favorite apps and tech

Here are some of my favorite apps and tech:

• SimpleLogin – Privacy tool for creating email aliases to protect your inbox.

• 1Password – Secure password manager for storing and autofilling credentials.

• 1 Second Everyday – Video diary app that stitches daily clips into a timeline.

• ChatGPT – AI assistant for writing, coding, research, and everyday tasks.

• Drafts – Quick-capture notes app that sends text anywhere.

• Edge – Microsoft’s fast and feature-rich web browser.

• SwiftKey – Smart keyboard with swipe typing and predictive suggestions.

• Obsidian – Knowledge base app for linking notes in a personal knowledge graph.

• Perplexity – AI-powered search engine for natural-language questions.

• Amazon Q Developer CLI – Command-line AI assistant for developers.

• iTerm2 – Advanced terminal emulator for macOS with rich features.

• Todoist – Popular task manager for organizing projects and to-dos.

• Cursor – AI-powered code editor that helps with debugging and refactoring.

• NuPhy Air75 V2 – Sleek mechanical keyboard with low-profile switches.

• Raycast – Productivity launcher for commands, shortcuts, and extensions.

• Araxis Merge – Professional file comparison and merge tool.

• Bartender 4 – Utility for organizing and hiding Mac menu bar icons.

• DaisyDisk – Visual disk analyzer to find and clean large files.

• DBeaver – Universal database tool for developers and analysts.

• Gmail – Google’s email platform with strong spam filtering.

• Google Drive – Cloud storage and file sharing service.

• Google Docs – Online collaborative word processor.

• Google Sheets – Web-based spreadsheet tool with real-time collaboration.

• Shottr – Lightweight screenshot and annotation tool for Mac.

• LuLu – Free, open-source firewall for blocking unwanted network connections.

  ActualBudget – Self-hosted budgeting application that you use for tracking budgets and spending, functioning as an alternative to apps like YNAB

  LazyGit – A simple, fast terminal UI for Git commands, making common Git operations easier to visualize and perform.

  micro – A modern, lightweight terminal-based text editor designed to be intuitive and easy to use.

  Zed – Blazing-fast collaborative code editor by creators of Atom. Minimalist yet powerful.

  Orion — A fast, lightweight macOS browser built on WebKit, focused on privacy, extensions (Chrome/Firefox support), and native performance.

  Alacritty + tmux – Alcritty is a fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator focused on simplicity and performance. tmux is a terminal multiplexer that lets you split windows, run multiple sessions, and persist terminal state across disconnects.

  Stats – A free, open-source macOS menu bar app that shows real-time system information like CPU, memory, disk, network, battery, and sensor usage.

  
  

Claude Code vs Amazon Q Developer CLI

• Cost
• Claude Code:  $20/$100/$200 with various usage limits
• Q CLI: $20/month with seemingly no usage limits
• Saving past chats
• Claude Code: Automatic saving; retrieve using /resume
• Q CLI: Manual saving with /save; retrieve using /load
• Command permissions
• Claude: Can whitelist individual bash commands. Can persist whitelist between sessions.
• Q CLI: Can't whitelist individual bash commands, just bash in general. Whitelist does not persist between sessions.
• Annoyances
•  Q CLI: For some reason, I need to login every day. 

ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude

 

 

ChatGPT

• Best-in-class image generation
• Vibe coding often has errors and i fails to fix them
• Sora video generation (video only)
• Conversational memory across chats
• Personable audio chat (less stiff/terse than Gemini)
• Has a dedicated desktop app (like Claude but unlike Gemini) 
• Generate shareable HTML apps from chat (Canvas)  
• Bad at working with tabular data 

Gemini

• Update: Nano-banana image generation is even better and faster than ChatGPT
• Vibe coding works the firsst time.
• Deep Google ecosystem integration (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Maps, Sheets)
• 1M token context window (can handle massive documents)
• Veo3 video + audio generation (more complete than Sora). YouTube training data powering video generation
• Conversational memory
• Real-time web access through Google Search
• Good at working with tabular data 
• 2.5 Flash model is faster than ChatGPT 5 at text and image generation

Claude

• Vibe coding: haven't tested it yet
• Extensive tool integrations and flexibility
• Generate shareable HTML apps from chat (Artifacts) 
• Natural, personable voice conversations (less stiff/terse than Gemini)
• Has a dedicated desktop app
• Good at working with tabular data  

 

ChatGPT vs Gemini

 ChatGPT (paid) advantages:

• Better image generation than Gemini
• Audio chat is more personable than Gemini, less stiff/businesslike/terse
• Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT's Deep Research asks clarifying questions before starting. 
• Really good analysis of people relationships 

Gemini (paid) advantages:

• Better video generation (with audio)
• 2 TB Google Drive space
• Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets integration
• Automatically does web searches without having to click a Web button
• 1-2M context window vs 128K
• Handles large amounts of spreadsheet-type data pasted in - ChatGPT misses a lot 
• The Gems feature is really good, especially one in which I asked it to be "a Catholic spiritual director, drawing on the wisdom of the saints and Catholic tradition." The advice was a lot meatier than when I tried the same in Claude.
• Can add an event to Google Calendar via screenshot or picture
• Can ask questions of the current spreadsheet, PDF, or doc in Google Drive. 
• More comprehensive and precise answers than Claude for "how to" questions
• Takes what you told it about yourself in the custom instructions and weaves that information into its responses more than ChatGPT.

Claude (paid) advantages:

• Integrations feature lets me query Atlassian Confluence
• Audio chat is more personable than Gemini, less stiff/businesslike/terse  Audio chat is customizable with instructions in Claude Project. Gemini Gems don't have audio chat.
• Unlike Gemini, Claude's Deep Research asks clarifying questions before starting. 

Zen Browser

 I have been trying out Zen Browser for a few days and am quite liking it as a replacement for Arc Browser for which support seems to be getting discontinued.

 Zen is better than Arc for:

• Seems to use less memory
• Open source 
• Extensions are shared between Spaces - you don't need to reinstall extensions for each Space 

Arc is still better than Zen for:

• Cmd+T can access extensions 
• Little Arc windows 

General reasons to prefer Zen/Arc over other browsers:

• Vertical tabs
•  Spaces (dedicated space for a profile and its tabs)