Subscription Tracker for TiddlyWiki

A vanilla TiddlyWiki 5.4+ plugin that turns subscriptions-tagged tiddlers into a Notion-style table with multi-currency monthly + yearly cost math, trial countdowns, render-time auto-rolled renewal dates, and a structured editor.

Plugin id: $:/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker · License: MIT · Current version: 0.1.12

Features

• Notion-style table with status pills (Active / Trial / Paused / Canceled), category-tag pills, billing-frequency, renewal date, native amount, monthly equivalent, yearly equivalent.
• Multi-currency. Each subscription stores its native currency. Monthly / yearly columns and totals convert to a single configurable display currency via a user-maintained rates tiddler.
• Render-time auto-roll for renewal dates: if the stored renewal-date is in the past for an Active/Trial/Paused sub, the displayed date rolls forward by billing-frequency chunks until it's in the future. The stored field is never mutated, so git diff stays clean.
• Trial countdown via a trial-ends field, separately from renewal-date.
• Structured EditTemplate. Tiddlers tagged with subscriptions get a labeled form (status / billing / amount / currency / dates / URLs / payment hint) instead of TW's default field editor.
• + New subscription button on the main view.
• Filter dropdowns: status (Active+Trial+Paused / All / Active / Trial / Paused / Canceled) and category-tag.
• Sort dropdown: Name, Next renewal, Monthly cost (high→low), Yearly cost (high→low).
• Strict data hygiene. Missing currency rate, missing trial-ends on a Trial sub, or display-currency misconfiguration each surface as a banner above the table with a counter — failing visibly rather than silently lying about totals.
• No external plugin dependencies. Two small in-plugin JS filter modules cover the date arithmetic that TW 5.4 core lacks; everything else is pure WikiText + CSS.

Install

The plugin can be installed two ways depending on how you run TiddlyWiki.

A) Single-file drop-in (any TiddlyWiki 5.4+ wiki)

Download subscription-tracker-0.1.12.json (newer versions on the releases page) and drag it onto your wiki's import area. Save the wiki. The shadow tiddler Subscriptions becomes available immediately — open it via direct URL fragment #Subscriptions, the top search box, or the sidebar's More → Shadows tab.

B) Node.js install (separate-tiddler-files mode)

If your wiki runs on tiddlywiki from npm with a folder of .tid files:

1. Clone or copy this repo somewhere accessible. The plugin folder is plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker/.

2. Pick one of the two install shapes below.

   Option 1 — TIDDLYWIKI_PLUGIN_PATH (keeps the realaaa/ publisher folder)

   Point TW at the repo's plugins/ directory at launch:

   TIDDLYWIKI_PLUGIN_PATH=/path/to/this/repo/plugins tiddlywiki /your-wiki --listen

   Then add the plugin to your wiki's tiddlywiki.info plugins array:

   {
     "plugins": [
       "tiddlywiki/filesystem",
       "tiddlywiki/tiddlyweb",
       "realaaa/subscription-tracker"
     ]
   }

   The env var supplies the search path; the info file says which plugin to load.

   Option 2 — drop into your wiki's local plugins/ folder (flat, no env var)

   The wiki's own plugins/ folder is flat — each immediate subdirectory is loaded as a plugin directly. So copy or symlink the inner subscription-tracker/ folder, not the realaaa/ publisher folder:

   cp -R /path/to/this/repo/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker /your-wiki/plugins/subscription-tracker
   # or: ln -s /path/to/this/repo/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker /your-wiki/plugins/subscription-tracker

   Plugins under the wiki's local plugins/ folder load automatically — do not add realaaa/subscription-tracker to the tiddlywiki.info plugins array, or TW will also try to resolve it via the search path and warn Cannot find plugin.

3. Restart your wiki.

Use

1. Open the Subscriptions view. Direct URL #Subscriptions, top search box, or sidebar More → Shadows.
2. Add subscriptions. Click + New subscription on the view, or tag any tiddler with subscriptions plus 1+ category tag (Entertainment, Productivity, etc.). The custom edit form appears whenever you edit a subscriptions-tagged tiddler.
3. Required fields per subscription: status, billing-frequency, amount, currency, plus renewal-date for non-Canceled subs and trial-ends for Trial subs.

Convert an existing tiddler to a subscription

If you already have a tiddler for a vendor (e.g. an existing Netflix or Spotify note with body content, links, history) and want to start tracking it as a subscription without losing the body or other fields, the plugin ships a Convert to Subscription action. It lives in the tiddler's overflow dropdown so it doesn't clutter the main toolbar of every tiddler in your wiki.

1. Open the tiddler you want to convert (e.g. Netflix).
2. Click the down-arrow ▾ icon in the tiddler's toolbar (TiddlyWiki's standard "more actions" dropdown — usually next to the edit and close icons).
3. Click Convert to Subscription in the dropdown. The plugin will:
   • append the configured tag (default subscriptions) to the tiddler's existing tags,
   • set status=Active, billing-frequency=Monthly, currency=<your display currency>, renewal-date=today + 30 days,
   • create empty placeholder fields (amount, trial-ends, vendor-url, cancel-url, payment-method) only if they don't already exist on the tiddler (so any pre-existing values are preserved),
   • open the tiddler in edit mode so you can fill in amount and adjust the other defaults.

The action only appears in the dropdown for tiddlers that are not already subscriptions and not system tiddlers — once a tiddler is converted, the entry disappears from its dropdown automatically.

Tip — pin to main toolbar for bulk onboarding. If you have many tiddlers to convert in one session, you can promote the action from the dropdown to the main view toolbar: open any tiddler's info area (click the i-circle), switch to the Tools tab, find the Convert to Subscription row, and check its checkbox. To put it back in the dropdown, uncheck the row.

Configure

• $:/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker/config/settings — display currency (default AUD), tag-name (default subscriptions), renewal-soon threshold in days (default 14), show-canceled-default (default no).
• $:/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker/config/rates — JSON map of currency rates relative to the display currency. Ships with AUD: 1.0, USD: 1.52, EUR: 1.65, GBP: 1.92. Update when rates drift; the display-currency entry must always be 1.0.

Roadmap

• v0.2 — proper monthly/yearly-cost sort that normalises across billing-frequency, display-currency toggle UI, dedicated "no subscriptions yet" empty state.
• v0.3 — lifetime / historical spend (started-date field).
• v0.4 — family / shared subs (shared-with field, effective-cost split).
• v0.5 — TiddlyTools/Time/Alarms integration for actual reminder notifications.

Develop

The repo is a TiddlyWiki plugin source tree plus tests:

plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker/   plugin source
tests/wiki/                             bare TW node wiki for testing
tests/render/                           render-test fixtures + expectations.txt
tests/fixtures/                         manual end-to-end fixture set
tests/test-plan.md                      12-scenario manual test
bin/run-render-tests.sh                 fixture-based render runner (44 tests)
bin/test-build.sh                       plugin-packaging smoke
assets/                                 README screenshots

To work on the plugin:

# Run the wiki for browser testing
cp tests/fixtures/*.tid tests/wiki/tiddlers/
TIDDLYWIKI_PLUGIN_PATH=$(pwd)/plugins tiddlywiki tests/wiki --listen host=127.0.0.1 port=8088
# Open http://127.0.0.1:8088/#Subscriptions

# Run render tests after edits
bin/run-render-tests.sh

# Smoke test the plugin builds cleanly
bin/test-build.sh

# Rebuild dist JSON (drag-drop import bundle: a 1-element array containing
# the plugin tiddler, with the inner shadow tiddlers stringified into its
# `text` field — this is the shape TW's import accepts).
TIDDLYWIKI_PLUGIN_PATH=$(pwd)/plugins tiddlywiki tests/wiki \
    --output dist \
    --rendertiddler '$:/core/templates/exporters/JsonFile' subscription-tracker-0.1.12.json application/json "" exportFilter '[[$:/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker]]'

If render tests behave weirdly, check tests/wiki/tiddlers/ for stale fixture leftovers from interrupted runs and clean them:

find tests/wiki/tiddlers/ -name "*.tid" -not -name '$__StoryList.tid' -delete

The plugin ships as a set of shadow tiddlers under $:/plugins/realaaa/subscription-tracker/:

Credits

• Inspiration: the TiddlyWiki forum thread on subscription tracking (Sunny, Springer, Eric Shulman, TonyM).
• Notion-style table layout as the design target.