Nowly · 此刻

A desktop dashboard that answers one question: what should I be doing right now?

English | 简体中文

Nowly — 此刻 in Chinese, meaning this moment — is a local-first focus dashboard for Windows 10/11. Instead of scattering your day across a calendar app, a to-do app, a board, and a notes app, Nowly puts today's schedule, the tasks that actually matter, and a focus timer on one surface you already look at: your desktop.

Set it as your wallpaper and it disappears into the background — no window to open, no app to switch to. Glance at the screen, see what's next, start focusing. All data stays on your machine in a local SQLite database.

Why Nowly

• One glance, one answer. Today's events, the task that matters, and the time left on your current session are visible without a single click.
• Lives on your desktop. Wallpaper mode embeds Nowly behind your icons, so the dashboard is always there and never in the way.
• Focus, not accumulation. The Eisenhower matrix and the focus timer exist to shrink your list down to the one thing worth doing now.
• Yours alone. No account, no sync, no telemetry — local-first by design.

Features

• Monthly calendar — events with times, colors, and per-day detail views, so today's schedule is always in sight.
• Eisenhower matrix — sort tasks across the urgent/important quadrants and keep the "do it now" quadrant honest.
• Focus timer — countdown sessions with a distraction-free fullscreen mode and session statistics.
• Kanban board — customizable lanes, cards, and fields for lightweight project tracking.
• Notes — quick capture with a dedicated manager for organizing entries.
• Wallpaper mode — embed Nowly behind your desktop icons with taskbar-aware positioning, or run it as a regular window.
• Flexible layout — arrange every module on a 12x8 grid; toggle modules on or off and resize them freely.
• Custom modules — install sandboxed .js extensions from a local file or the built-in module market, each running in an isolated iframe.
• Personalization — Gaussian blur, a global color picker, calendar formatting, density controls, and login-on-startup.
• Localization — English and Simplified Chinese, following your system language on startup.

Usage

• Use the top-right button to set Nowly as your wallpaper.
• Double-click the wallpaper or click the tray icon to return to foreground mode.
• Open Settings to control wallpaper close behavior, login startup, calendar formatting, density, and module visibility.
• Closing the foreground window restores the wallpaper when the wallpaper preference is enabled; otherwise it hides to the tray.
• Exit Nowly in the tray menu is the only action that terminates the process.

Tech Stack

• Frontend — React + TypeScript, built with Vite and styled with Tailwind CSS.
• Desktop shell — Tauri 2 with a Rust backend.
• Storage — local SQLite via rusqlite (bundled).
• Testing — Vitest for unit/component tests, Playwright for end-to-end, and cargo test for the Rust layer.

Development

Requirements: Node.js, Rust toolchain, and the Tauri prerequisites for Windows.

npm install                                        # install dependencies
npm run dev                                         # Vite dev server (127.0.0.1:1420)
npm test                                            # Vitest unit/component tests
npm run build                                       # tsc + vite build
npx playwright test                                 # end-to-end tests
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml     # Rust tests
npm run tauri build                                 # build the Windows executable

Project Structure

src/                 React frontend
  app/               App shell, layout grid, bootstrap hooks
  calendar/          Monthly calendar and events
  matrix/            Eisenhower task matrix
  kanban/            Kanban board
  notes/             Notes
  focus/             Focus timer and statistics
  widgets/           Extension/custom-module system and sandbox
  components/        Shared UI (Dialog, Select, DatePicker, ...)
  data/              Repository interface and Tauri implementation
  i18n/              Localization (en/zh)
src-tauri/           Rust backend (Tauri commands, SQLite, wallpaper, tray)
registry/            Custom-module registry and examples
docs/                Design specs and implementation plans

Custom Modules

Custom modules are self-describing .js files that run in an isolated iframe sandbox (allow-scripts, null origin, strict CSP). They cannot import packages, touch the parent DOM, or reach the network directly — the host exposes a small host API (state, today, and a permissioned host.fetch) plus a root element to render into. Once installed, a module becomes a freely placed widget on the 12x8 grid alongside the built-in modules. See docs/custom-modules/SKILL.md for the full module format and runtime contract.