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Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

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Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#71

Post by skrebbel »

andrey_utkin wrote: post #63

The concept of viewing activities as DAG is going to be huge and ubiquitous, I think. This applies to any activities of humans, organizations and computer systems, and hybrids of those three. One of the most fascinating epiphanies I've had recently is exactly that the purposeful behavior of these three kinds of actors can be decomposed as DAG with a relationship meaning "contributes to fulfillment of a need". So cong…

why acyclic though?

like, if i want to "feel better" and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those.

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#72

Post by andrey_utkin »

skrebbel wrote: post #71
andrey_utkin wrote: post #63

The concept of viewing activities as DAG is going to be huge and ubiquitous, I think. This applies to any activities of humans, organizations and computer systems, and hybrids of those three. One of the most fascinating epiphanies I've had recently is exactly that the purposeful behavior of these three kinds of actors can be decomposed as DAG with a relationship meaning "contributes to fulfillment of a need". So cong…

why acyclic though? like, if i want to "feel better" and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those.

> why acyclic though?

What extra usefulness you'd get from using cyclic graphs? I don't see the point yet.

> like, if i want to "feel better"

I don't see "feel better" in the example graphs anywhere.

> and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those.

This is up to a person setting the goals. And the goals themselves are just the means for satisfaction of fundamental needs (which I found very helpful to outline explicitly in my personal DAG).

For one person, it might be of high importance to lose weight, it will be their long-term concern and they will try different approaches, including running marathons.

For another person, weight might be fine for their life and needs, but running a marathon may be important for them, say, it was their New Year resolution. They may have identified that if they could lose just a few kilograms, their marathon performance and experience would be much better, so they want to do it. In this case weight loss is an activity contributing to the higher level goal.

A third person may indeed be after feeling good about their body, and both weight loss and running marathons would be activities of the same rank, contributing to the satisfaction of their desire to feel good about their body.

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#73

Post by Phil-bitplex »

lhdj wrote: post #56

Looks really good! Here is an open-source version I made called TaskGraph [1], a fork from uber/react-digraph[2]. I made it for my startup [3] because I didn't really like Jira in the context of 3 people. We have been using it for a couple of months and it works really well. Apologies in advance for the lack of documentation. If you have any questions by all means. TaskGraph has: - Task status (todo/in-progress/done)…

I made something similar - GamePlan [1] (not open source though

It's a visual task/planning tool. Does estimates, task grouping, resources, a bunch of different constraints, critical paths, and lots of other stuff.

I'm in the process of adding costing to it, and its a lot of fun to use.

I use it for all my pre-planning of projects, just to get a feel of feasibility

[1] - https://www.gameplan.global/

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#74

Post by andrey_utkin »

andrey_utkin wrote: post #72
skrebbel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why acyclic though? like, if i want to "feel better" and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those.

> why acyclic though? What extra usefulness you'd get from using cyclic graphs? I don't see the point yet. > like, if i want to "feel better" I don't see "feel better" in the example graphs anywhere. > and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those. This is up to a person setting the goals. And the goals themselves are just the means for satisfaction of fundamental needs (which I found ver…

A fourth person may absolutely see no point in one, or both of running marathons or losing weight, because they already do tennis or swimming or whatever and/or they are slim enough for their needs.

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#76

Post by [deleted] »

andrey_utkin wrote: post #72
skrebbel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why acyclic though? like, if i want to "feel better" and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those.

> why acyclic though? What extra usefulness you'd get from using cyclic graphs? I don't see the point yet. > like, if i want to "feel better" I don't see "feel better" in the example graphs anywhere. > and "lose weight", then "run a marathon" might contribute to both of those. This is up to a person setting the goals. And the goals themselves are just the means for satisfaction of fundamental needs (which I found ver…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#77

Post by toyg »

DaveWM wrote: post #70
toyg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Some feedback (i only tried the webapp, from ios): - i’d find more intuitive to have “the big prize” at the bottom, so i can work my way down by priority. Maybe an option? - i should be able to delete the root node, which would scrap the entire hierarchy. Give us a big warning but have the feature. - i should be able to edit nodes from the graph - even just by clicking an icon that sends me to the list-i…

Thanks very much for the feedback. To respond: - Is this in the list view or the graph view? I did originally have the list order reversed (i.e. root node at the bottom), but I found it very confusing. I could potentially add a setting to control the order. - I've tried to avoid deleting nodes where possible. If you delete a parent node, its children will be automatically re-arranged rather than deleted. Could you re…

1 - graph view. Maybe have something to flip the graph only.

2 - yeah, I grasped that you can just rename it, but it's a bit annoying because I might also have to manually delete a bunch of nodes below.

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#78

Post by DaveWM »

Phil-bitplex wrote: post #73
lhdj wrote: post #56

Looks really good! Here is an open-source version I made called TaskGraph [1], a fork from uber/react-digraph[2]. I made it for my startup [3] because I didn't really like Jira in the context of 3 people. We have been using it for a couple of months and it works really well. Apologies in advance for the lack of documentation. If you have any questions by all means. TaskGraph has: - Task status (todo/in-progress/done)…

I made something similar - GamePlan [1] (not open source though It's a visual task/planning tool. Does estimates, task grouping, resources, a bunch of different constraints, critical paths, and lots of other stuff. I'm in the process of adding costing to it, and its a lot of fun to use. I use it for all my pre-planning of projects, just to get a feel of feasibility [1] - https://www.gameplan.global/

Wow that's really cool, thanks for sharing

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#79

Post by thanatropism »

I've never used Todo graphs, but I've spent hours using Yed, a free (but not Free if you're into that kind of thing) point-and-click graph editor with various layout algorithms.

I've found many times that the visual outcome of laying out my concept graphs in say, hierarchical or force-directed layouts. Mainly to show me that I was missing certain links. This is not formal concept analysis (which uses formal lattices), mind you, it's just using the visual realization of graphs as Gestalt.

I actually should be doing that a lot more...

---

That said, we should always be wary of the "A" in "DAG". That's a deep ontological assumption that restricts the universe we are able to think about. Sometimes, like in the Judea Pearl approach, this enables maths to get done. Sometimes we should just cope with cycles or resolve them at the appropriate time when enough information and wisdom is available.

Re: Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App

#80

Post by thanatropism »

jmiskovic wrote: post #5
DaveWM wrote: post #2

Hey HN! I've just launched my latest side-project, Intention. Intention's an app to help you achieve your goals. The idea is that you create a graph of goals/tasks (intentions), with your high-level goals at the top and actionable tasks at the bottom. That allows you to create a collection of actionable tasks you can work on, and to visualise how they relate to your high-level goals. Any feedback would be much apprec…

Congratulations on launch. I was initially interested in idea. I installed the app to try it out, but gave up on registration. I would use it offline and don't like the need for account. You might reconsider it as unnecessary barrier. I also avoid apps with ads. Also, why call it DAG when it is a tree? It has a root and cannot have more than one path between nodes.

A tree is defined constructively, and here some definitions have further constraints (N children, often 2, per parent).

A DAG is a restriction on general graphs.

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