Do It List

Task trees with real progress.

Do It List is a small web app for breaking work into nested tasks and watching parent and root progress roll up automatically from the leaves. Importance is expressed by decomposition: break the work that matters more into more detail, and it counts for more — there are no weights to configure.

Do It List grows milestone by milestone. The execution dashboard lives in docs/PLAN.md; the canonical product spec lives in docs/ProductSpec.md. The first shipped milestone is M01-BaseApp (docs/milestones/m01-baseapp/m01-baseapp.md).

Stack

• Phoenix LiveView 1.1 (Elixir 1.18)
• PostgreSQL 16
• Tailwind + DaisyUI for styling
• Bcrypt for password hashing

The whole development environment is containerised. The only host-level requirements are Docker and Docker Compose.

Run it

docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost:4000. Register an account, create an Initiative, and start adding lists and nested tasks.

The first boot is slow — Elixir, Hex, and the JS asset toolchain are all pulled into the image. Subsequent runs use the cached _build, deps, and node_modules named volumes.

Environment

compose.yaml ships with sensible defaults that need no configuration. To override them, copy .env.example to .env and edit:

Variable	Default	Purpose
WEB_PORT	4000	Port mapped from the host to the web app.
DB_USERNAME	postgres	PostgreSQL user.
DB_PASSWORD	postgres	PostgreSQL password.
DB_DATABASE	doit_dev	PostgreSQL database name.

Database data lives in the named Docker volume doit_pgdata, so it survives docker compose down. docker compose down -v wipes everything.

Run the tests

The test suite (notably the progress roll-up unit tests) runs inside the container too. With the stack already up, reuse the running container — no spin-up cost:

docker compose exec -e MIX_ENV=test web mix test

Without a running stack, an ephemeral container works as before:

docker compose run --rm \
  -e MIX_ENV=test \
  -e DB_DATABASE=doit \
  web mix test

This creates a doit_test database alongside doit_dev. The pure-Elixir progress tests in test/doit/tasks/progress_test.exs do not touch the database at all and are the fastest signal that the roll-up math is correct.

Browser-level behavior is verified by hand — each milestone arc carries [Human] action items in its testing section instead of automated browser tests.

Terminology

Canonical definitions live in docs/ProductSpec.md. Quick reference:

• Initiative — the top-level container, has members and many Lists.
• Task — any node in the tree.
• List — informal name for a root task (a task whose parent_id is null). An Initiative usually has multiple Lists, each with its own tree.
• Roll-up progress — computed_progress on a task: the average progress of all its descendant leaves (the leaf average).
• Initiative member — a (user, initiative, role) triple. Roles are owner, editor, viewer.

How progress works

The principle and formula live in docs/ProductSpec.md; detailed edge cases live in docs/milestones/m01-baseapp/m01-baseapp.md. Pure implementation lives in DoIt.Tasks.Progress and is exercised by test/doit/tasks/progress_test.exs.

leaf task                    → manual_progress (clamped 0..100)
status == "done"             → 100
branch task                  → sum(leaf_progress) / leaf_count   (all descendant leaves)

Every leaf counts one unit wherever it sits, so a subtree's pull on its ancestors is its leaf count — decomposing a branch further is how it comes to matter more. Marking a task done snaps its progress to 100; reopening lets the user move it back down. Whenever a task changes, DoIt.Tasks recomputes its ancestors recursively.

Architecture, briefly

• lib/doit/accounts/ — user registration / login / password hashing.
• lib/doit/initiatives/ — initiatives and initiative membership.
• lib/doit/tasks/ — tasks, comments, activity events, and the pure-Elixir Progress module.
• lib/doit_web/live/ — InitiativeIndexLive and InitiativeShowLive. The latter subscribes to initiative:<id> PubSub topics so other browsers see updates promptly. Last writer wins; no conflict resolution.
• lib/doit_web/user_auth.ex — session-based auth plug + LiveView mount hooks.

Activity events are recorded on task creation, deletion, comment, and field changes (title, status, progress, assignee, parent, priority) and are shown in the task editor sidebar.

Known limitations (intentional, see Non-Goals in the milestone)

• No drag-and-drop reordering. sort_order is set on creation and editable only via the JSON form field.
• No conflict resolution: simultaneous edits to the same field follow last-writer-wins.
• No notifications, attachments, kanban, calendar, or AI features.
• No password reset / email confirmation flow yet — registration logs you straight in.
• mix release / production Dockerfile are out of scope for M01-BaseApp; the shipped image runs mix phx.server in dev mode.