One to-do list for you and your AI coding agents, always in view on your Windows desktop. Your agents write the items. You see them on a spiral notepad and tick them off.

Built with AI. This app was written by Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding assistant, and directed and tested by a person. It is shared as-is, in case it is useful to someone else.

A coding agent often finds a problem it should not fix right now: a missing check, a leftover debug line, a broken page in another module. It mentions the problem in the chat, the chat ends, and the problem is forgotten. Notes saved inside each project are not much better: you see them only when you open that project again.

AgentsToDo keeps all of these in one list that stays on your screen.

• The list is one Markdown file, todo.md in your user folder. The desktop note shows it.
• Agents add the items. When an agent finds a problem it is not fixing, it adds a line under the project's heading.
• Your own to-dos go through the agent too. Tell it "add a to-do: renew the domain", and it writes the line.
• You tick items on the note. A tick writes [x] into the file, so the agents see what is done.

The note has no box for typing new items. That is on purpose: the agent does the writing, and you keep your eyes on the list. A plain file is also the simplest thing any agent can write to: no account, no API, no login. If you want to type an item yourself, open todo.md in any text editor. The note shows the change within a moment.

The agent needs two things: an instruction to use the file, and permission to edit it.

For Claude Code, add these lines to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md:

## To-do list
My to-do list is C:\Users\<you>\todo.md. It is shown on my desktop.
- When you find a problem you are not fixing now, add it to the list.
- When I ask you to add a to-do, add it to the list.
- Add each item under the project's `## ` heading (create the heading if it is missing),
  as `- [ ] <short title> <!-- details -->`. Start the title with `! ` for security problems.
- When an item is fixed, change its `[ ]` to `[x]`.

Then add this rule to ~/.claude/settings.json, so it can edit the file without asking each time:

{ "permissions": { "allow": ["Edit(~/todo.md)"] } }

Other agents work the same way. Put the same lines in the file they read their instructions from, for example AGENTS.md.

• Shows the - [ ] items of the file, grouped by its ## headings.
• Reloads as soon as the file changes on disk.
• Ticking a box writes [x] into that one line. The rest of the file stays exactly as it was.
• Double-click a line to select its text. All of it starts selected, so Ctrl+C copies the whole item, even the part cut off with "…". Press Esc or click elsewhere to finish.
• Drag it anywhere. It opens where you left it.
• Resize it with the ridges in the bottom-right corner. It keeps that size too.
• Three buttons: keep it in front of other windows or behind them, minimize, and close.
• Click a group heading to fold it. Folded groups stay folded after a restart.

The default file is %USERPROFILE%\todo.md. On first start the app creates it with a short example.

# To do

## Website
- [ ] Fix the broken link
- [ ] ! Renew the certificate
- [x] Move the blog
- [ ] Compress the images <!-- Only the hero images. -->

• # ... (optional) is the title of the note.
• ## ... starts a group.
• - [ ] is an open item, - [x] a done one (shown crossed out).
• A title that starts with ! is written in red.
• Text inside <!-- --> is hidden on the note and shown in the tooltip when you hover the item.
• Every other line is ignored, so the file can hold other notes too.

Save the file as UTF-8.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\AgentsToDo\settings.json keeps the position, size, front/behind mode and folded groups. To use another file, close the note, add TodoFile, and start it again:

{ "TodoFile": "%OneDrive%\\Notes\\todo.md" }

You need Windows 10 or 11 and the .NET 10 SDK to build it. Running it needs only the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.

git clone https://github.com/CanManalp/AgentsToDo.git
cd AgentsToDo
dotnet publish src/AgentsToDo -c Release -o "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\AgentsToDo"

Then start %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\AgentsToDo\AgentsToDo.exe. To find it in the Start menu, put a shortcut to it in the Programs folder (press Win+R and type shell:programs). To start it with Windows, put a shortcut to it in the Startup folder (press Win+R and type shell:startup). To update, close the note first, then run the same dotnet publish command again.

• One note per Windows user. Starting the app a second time does nothing.
• In "behind" mode the note stays under all other windows but above the desktop. Click its taskbar button to bring it forward. It goes back when you click somewhere else. Win+D (show desktop) hides it like any other window.
• The note is made for the mouse. Its buttons and boxes don't take keyboard focus.

MIT