🧠Reflex CLI — Building an AI-Powered Productivity Tracker for Developers, From the Terminal

Tech Guy — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 06:19:54 +0000

“Reflect. Focus. Improve.” — A developer-first tool to help you log your work, stay focused, and get AI-powered daily insights — all from your terminal.

🚩 TL;DR

I built Reflex CLI, a privacy-first, AI-enhanced productivity tracker for developers who live in the terminal. It helps you:

📋 Manage daily tasks
⏱️ Run Pomodoro-style focus sessions
🧠 Reflect on your work using AI reviews (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or even local LLMs)
🔒 Work entirely offline if you prefer

👉 Try it here: GitHub – reflex-cli

💡 The Motivation Behind Reflex

Like many devs, I bounce between writing code, reviewing PRs, documenting features, and debugging production issues. I often ended my day feeling busy but not productive.

I tried productivity tools like Notion, Todoist, and even paid SaaS platforms — but most felt either too bloated, invasive, or not developer-friendly. I wanted something minimal, offline-first, and native to my workflow: the terminal.

Also, I was experimenting with LLMs and prompt engineering, and wondered:

“What if AI could help me reflect on how I worked today — not just answer questions?”

That’s where Reflex was born.

🔧 The Process: How I Built Reflex

The goal was to make it simple yet powerful. Here’s how I approached it:

1. Designing the CLI UX

I used Typer to define commands like add, log, focus, stats, and review.
Rich handled the pretty printing — tables, progress bars, terminal formatting.

2. Task & Focus Tracking (Local DB)

Everything is stored locally using SQLite at ~/.reflex/reflex.db.
Schema is minimal: tasks, focus_sessions, logs — with timestamps.

3. Integrating AI Providers

This was the hardest part. I added support for:

OpenAI (gpt-3.5 / gpt-4)
Anthropic Claude
Google Gemini
Ollama (local LLM runtime)

You can switch providers via .env, and Reflex works even if you use no AI at all.

4. Offline & Privacy-First

No data leaves your machine unless you hit the review command.
Everything — from tasks to logs — stays local.

😓 Problems I Faced

Cross-platform bugs on Windows terminal formatting
Prompt tuning for meaningful AI reviews from sparse logs
Dealing with inconsistent API responses across providers
Designing CLI ergonomics that feel intuitive (especially around logging and reviewing)

🧠 What I Learned

Prompt Engineering = UX Design: Your AI is only as helpful as your prompts are intentional.
Good developer tools respect context: I stayed terminal-first, offline-first, AI-optional — and it made the tool feel like it belonged.
Local LLMs are practical: Ollama surprised me. With llama2 locally, AI reviews were good enough for most cases — and free.

📊 Reflex in Action

reflex add "Write blog post"
reflex start-focus
reflex log "Wrote 700 words on Medium"
reflex review --provider openai

Here’s an example of what the AI review looks like:

• You completed 3 of 4 tasks
• Focus sessions totaled 85 minutes
• Commits indicate steady progress
• Suggests breaking big tasks next time

🔮 What’s Next

🧵 Threaded Logs: Tag your logs by task or project
📅 Weekly AI Summaries: Not just daily — long-term insights
🧪 Goal-based Tracking: “Did I actually move toward X?”
🔌 API Plugin Support: Maybe even integration with GitHub Projects, Linear, etc.

🧭 Why Reflex Matters

In a world of noisy productivity tools, Reflex gives developers:

🔒 Full control over their data
⚡ A lightning-fast, local workflow
🧠 Real reflection with AI
💻 Terminal-native design that doesn’t break flow

If you're someone who wants to understand, not just log your work — this tool is for you.

🛠️ Try It Out

git clone https://github.com/priyanshunawaldev/reflex-cli.git
cd reflex-cli
pip install -e .
reflex add "Build something useful"
reflex start-focus
reflex review

It takes 5 minutes to set up. The .env.example has all configs to get started with any provider or offline mode.

💬 Let’s Connect

This was a personal project that turned into something I genuinely use daily. I’m actively improving Reflex and would love feedback or contributors.

👉 GitHub Repo
👤 LinkedIn

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