A personal context management system — a single, self-hosted Rust application that fuses a wiki-style knowledge base (Zettelkasten) with task management. Notes and tasks are **first-class, cross-linkable entities** in one database, so a task like "Fix the roof leak" stays coupled to the home-repair log and contractor-call notes that give it context.
It is **offline-first**: fully useful on a laptop with no network, and (when the distributed layer lands) auto-syncing to a central instance hosted in blumeops. The primary surface will be a Neovim plugin (`heph.nvim`, an obsidian.nvim replacement); a CLI (`heph`) is the utility/scripting surface.
> **Why "what is next?" is the flagship.** heph is organized around concise, honest answers to recurring questions — above all *"what do I do right now?"* — built from ~10 years of the owner's lived prioritization discipline: projects-as-contexts; attention colors (white/orange/red/blue, where **red = a consequence exists if late**, not importance); **do-dates, not due-dates** (earliest-actionable, never a deadline alarm); and working-set tensions surfaced honestly (no "fake happy", no overwhelm).
See **[docs/explanation/design.md](docs/explanation/design.md)** for the vision and rationale, and **[docs/reference/v1-prototype-tech-spec.md](docs/reference/v1-prototype-tech-spec.md)** for the implementation-facing specification.
**Phase 1 (v1 prototype) — at Todoist feature-parity (2026-06-03)** on branch `feature/v1-prototype`. The Rust backend is feature-complete and **all three surfaces are installed daily-drivers**: the **`heph` CLI** (capture/scripting + the complete daemon API), **`heph-tui`** (the agenda/triage surface — attention-colored views, fzf move-to-project, undo/redo, an Inbox), and **`heph.nvim`** (the context/knowledge base — journals, wiki-links by id with conceal, a `[[` picker, YAML-frontmatter task editing). A global **⌘' quick-capture** popover (`heph-quickadd`) rounds out capture. Under the hood: **all three runtime modes work, replicas sync through a hub over HTTP, authenticated end-to-end with OIDC** (Authentik; JWKS/RS256, single-tenant), the offline-first config (`local` + `hub_url`) converges with a `yrs` text-CRDT, and the daemon runs as an OS service. CI is green, fully through Dagger; built test-first.
**heph now self-hosts its roadmap.** With parity reached, remaining and future work is tracked **in heph itself** — as tasks in the **`Hephaestus` project** (`heph view ondeck`, or the *On Deck* view in `heph-tui`) — rather than in a document. The [v1-prototype tech-spec](docs/reference/v1-prototype-tech-spec.md) is now the historical build record (its §14 tracker); the [design doc](docs/explanation/design.md) remains the living rationale.
A Cargo workspace, layered so the same core runs from a laptop to a hub:
- **`crates/heph-core`** — the library: data model, the `Store` trait + SQLite store, markdown parsing/extraction, recurrence, the "what is next?" engine, and the sync engine (op-log, hybrid logical clocks, CRDT/LWW merge, conflict detection). Synchronous and clock-injected (no ambient wall-clock reads) so ranking and merge are deterministic.
- **`crates/hephd`** — the per-device daemon. One binary, three modes — **`local`** (own SQLite replica; a syncing spoke when given `--hub-url`), **`server`** (also the sync hub: an HTTP endpoint others sync against), **`client`** (thin, remote, no replica — proxies to a `--server-url`) — selected by configuration via a targetable `Store` backend. Surfaces connect to it over a unix socket; it owns the DB handle and background sync.
- **`hephaestus.nvim`** (its own forge repo, [eblume/hephaestus.nvim](ssh://forgejo@forge.ops.eblu.me:2222/eblume/hephaestus.nvim.git)) — the Neovim editing/knowledge-base surface, a thin client of the daemon; see [docs/reference/heph-nvim.md](docs/reference/heph-nvim.md) and [docs/how-to/install-heph.md](docs/how-to/install-heph.md).
**Storage:** SQLite is the source of truth; a node's body is markdown; `export` materializes the whole store as a directory of `.md` files. **Sync:** each device holds a full replica + an append-only op-log; devices reconcile through a hub with automatic merge (text-CRDT bodies, last-writer-wins scalars, OR-set links) and a conflict queue for the ambiguous remainder. **Auth:** the hub verifies an OIDC bearer token (Authentik) on every op exchange — RS256/JWKS verification + a single-tenant owner gate — and clients obtain tokens via the OAuth 2.0 device-code flow (`heph auth login`), cached in the OS keyring. Local-only instances need no auth.
- **Test-driven.** Every feature has tests at the appropriate layer(s) — unit, property tests, real-socket daemon integration, and CLI process tests. No feature is "done" without them.
- **Change process.** Changes are classified **C0 / C1 / C2** (quick fix / human-review PR / Mikado chain). The v1 prototype is a single long-lived **C1**. See [docs/how-to/agent-change-process.md](docs/how-to/agent-change-process.md).
- **Git hooks & tooling.** [prek](https://github.com/dustinblackman/prek) runs formatting, linting, and secret detection; [mise](https://mise.jdx.dev/) runs repo automation; CI (Forgejo) runs `prek` plus `cargo fmt`/`clippy`/`test` via `.forgejo/scripts/build`.
```bash
prek install && prek install --hook-type commit-msg # set up hooks
- **Documentation** is [Diataxis](https://diataxis.fr/)-structured and built with [Quartz](https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/); changelog fragments use [Towncrier](https://towncrier.readthedocs.io/) under `docs/changelog.d/`. Working agents should read **[AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md)** first.
All rights reserved. This is a personal, private project — not licensed for use, copying, modification, or distribution. Open-sourcing may be considered in the future. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).
