tiki/view/help/tiki.md

tiki format

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Keep your tickets in your pockets!

tiki refers to a task or a ticket (hence tiki) stored in your git repo

• like a ticket it can have a status, priority, assignee, points, type and multiple tags attached to it
• they are essentially just Markdown files and you can use full Markdown syntax to describe a story or a bug
• they are stored in .doc/tiki subdirectory and are git-controlled - they are added to git when they are created, removed when they are done and the entire history is preserved in git repo
• because they are in git they can be perfectly synced up to the state of your repo or a branch
• you can use either the tiki CLI tool or any of the AI coding assistant to work with your tikis

tiki format

Tiki stores tickets (aka tikis) and documents (aka dokis) in the git repo along with code They are stored under .doc directory and are supposed to be checked-in/versioned along with all other files

The .doc/ directory contains two main subdirectories:

• doki/: Documentation files (wiki-style markdown pages)
• tiki/: Task files (kanban style tasks with YAML frontmatter)

Directory Structure

.doc/
├── doki/
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── page2.md
│   ├── page3.md
│   └── sub/
│       └── page4.md
└── tiki/
    ├── tiki-k3x9m2.md
    ├── tiki-7wq4na.md
    ├── tiki-p8j1fz.md
    └── ...

Tiki files

Tiki files are saved in .doc/tiki directory and can be managed via:

• tiki cli
• AI tools such as claude, gemini, codex or opencode
• manually

A tiki is made of its frontmatter that includes all fields related to a tiki status and types and its description in Markdown format

        ---
        title: Sample title
        type: story
        status: backlog
        assignee: booleanmaybe
        priority: 3
        points: 10
        tags:
            - UX
            - test
        dependsOn:
            - TIKI-ABC123
            - TIKI-DEF456
        due: 2026-04-01
        recurrence: 0 0 * * MON
        ---
        
        This is the description of a tiki in Markdown:
        
        # Tests
        Make sure all tests pass
        
        ## Integration tests
        Integration test cases

Fields

title

Required. String. The name of the tiki. Must be non-empty, max 200 characters.

title: Implement user authentication

type

Optional string. Defaults to the first type defined in workflow.yaml.

Valid values are the type keys defined in the types: section of workflow.yaml. Default types: story, bug, spike, epic. Each type can have a label and emoji configured in workflow.yaml. Aliases are not supported; use the canonical key.

type: bug

status

Optional string. Must match a status defined in your project's workflow.yaml. Default: the status marked default: true in the workflow (typically backlog).

If the value doesn't match any status in the workflow, it falls back to the default.

status: in_progress

priority

Optional. Stored in the file as an integer 1–5 (1 = highest, 5 = lowest). Default: 3.

In the TUI, priority is displayed as text with a color indicator:

Value	TUI label	Emoji
1	High	🔴
2	Medium High	🟠
3	Medium	🟡
4	Medium Low	🔵
5	Low	🟢

Text aliases are accepted when creating tikis (case-insensitive, hyphens/underscores/spaces as separators): high = 1, medium-high = 2, medium = 3, medium-low = 4, low = 5.

priority: 2

points

Optional integer. Range: 0 to maxPoints (configurable via tiki.maxPoints, default max is 10). 0 means unestimated. Values outside the valid range default to maxPoints / 2 (typically 5).

points: 3

assignee

Optional string. Free-form text, typically a username. Default: empty.

assignee: booleanmaybe

tags

Optional string list. Arbitrary labels attached to a tiki. Empty and whitespace-only strings are filtered out. Default: empty. Both YAML list formats are accepted:

# block list
tags:
    - frontend
    - urgent

# inline list
tags: [frontend, urgent]

dependsOn

Optional string list. Each entry must be a valid tiki ID in TIKI-XXXXXX format (6-character alphanumeric suffix) referencing an existing tiki. IDs are automatically uppercased. A dependency means this tiki is blocked by the listed tikis. Default: empty. Both YAML list formats are accepted:

# block list
dependsOn:
    - TIKI-ABC123
    - TIKI-DEF456

# inline list
dependsOn: [TIKI-ABC123, TIKI-DEF456]

due

Optional date in YYYY-MM-DD format (date-only, no time component). Represents when the task should be completed by. Empty string or omitted field means no due date.

due: 2026-04-01

recurrence

Optional cron string specifying a recurrence pattern. Displayed as English in the TUI. This is metadata-only — it does not auto-create tasks on completion.

Supported patterns:

Cron	Display
(empty)	None
0 0 * * *	Daily
0 0 * * MON	Weekly on Monday
0 0 * * TUE	Weekly on Tuesday
0 0 * * WED	Weekly on Wednesday
0 0 * * THU	Weekly on Thursday
0 0 * * FRI	Weekly on Friday
0 0 * * SAT	Weekly on Saturday
0 0 * * SUN	Weekly on Sunday
0 0 1 * *	Monthly

recurrence: 0 0 * * MON

Derived fields

Fields such as:

• created by
• created at
• updated at

are not stored and are calculated from git - the time and git user who created a tiki or the time it was last modified

Doki files

Documents are any file in a Markdown format saved under .doc/doki directory. They can be organized in subdirectory tree and include links between them or to external Markdown files