Custom fields / metadata

[axjab]

Already searched for existing discussions using keywords “custom attribute”, “custom properties”, “custom columns”, “metadata” and didn’t find anything, so I’m opening this.

It would be incredibly powerful to be able to attach arbitrary metadata to a task via the API. This would make TaskTrove significantly more extensible for all kinds of workflows. It’s similar to Taskwarrior’s UDA (User Defined Attributes) concept. Even a simple approach, like a dedicated string/JSON column that the user can populate freely, would already unlock a ton of use cases.

Use case:

I built my own custom TUI (terminal UI) for TaskTrove. I want to apply conditional styling to tasks: a script inspects a task, determines a colour based on some conditions, and writes a hex code into a special “style” proprety. When my frontend fetches the tasks later, it just reads that column and colours the entry accordingly resulting in a beautiful, colour‑coded task list in the terminal.

This feature would be just as useful for people who don't code. Anyone could add columns that matter to them, like “department”, “project code”, “budget”, or anything else that fits their context. The app wouldn’t need to know what the data means, just store and return it.

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Current workaround:

Right now I’m embedding my metadata as a JSON blob inside the task description and parsing it on the client side but it’s hacky and I worry it will cause problems later.

It would be great to have a first‑class, lightweight way to store custom fields.