wage-labor-record 0.2

Description:

wagelaborrecord 0.2

Wage Labor Record
Wage Labor Record is a tool to help you to keep track of what you did for whom
and how much time you spent on it ... if you are into that kind of thing.
This one weird trick to live a comfortable life
I recently discovered this trick to live a comfortable life:

You help people with their problems, and they give you some token in return.

Here they call this the "service economy" and the tokens are called "money".
I also found out that it is a lot easier when you:

Talk to them before you do something for them and find an agreement on what you will do and what you will get in return. They call it a "contract".
Write down what you did, how much time you spent on it and how many tokens you like to get in return. They call this writing an "invoice".

If you give those tokens to other people, they are vastly more likely to let your use food and shelter that they own[^1].
Or they might be willing to do something for you in return.
This software tool helps you to record what tasks you did for whom and how much time you spent on it.
[^1]: "Ownership" is a widely accepted social construct here.
If you own something you are to decide who can use it and what to do with it.
If necessary, people are convinced to play by those "ownership" by violence.
Violence means harming somebodies mental and/or physical well-being in a way that they don't want to happen.
However, most of the time people play by those rules since the think that "ownership" is a nice idea, and they don't want to ruin it for everybody.
Why chose WLR?
There are lots of other time tracking software.
I did not try all of them, but I made the following observations:

The simple ones often only run in the CLI.
This means I cannot see at a glance if and what task I am recording right now.
Those tools also won't be able to detect any idle time and remind me about it.
The GUI ones are mostly overtly complex and require way too many clicks.
The friction to use them day-to-day is way too high.
The ones with a decent usability and GUI are proprietary solutions tied to some
cloud infrastructure, and at some point they drop support for the Linux desktop client
(looking at your Toggle Track ...)

So this time tracker tries to

provide a minimal GUI that does not get into my way
never needs an internet connection to work or any cloud infrastructure
be simple enough that I can afford to maintain it over the next years
and adapt it to unforeseen needs in the future

Features

Detect idle time, remind me about it, let me decide what to do with it
Low friction: let me start tracking with a single click and decide later what I actually did
Human-Readable file format
UI

Explorable (cli is not enough)
Linux Desktop integration
Indicate if I am currently tracking time via tray icon
Centered around tray


Minimal dependencies (make it future-proof)
Minimal configuration needed/Sensible defaults

Non-Features

Internet connectivity
Using the electron framework to eat CPU, RAM and battery

Dependencies

xprintidle as a dependency to detect idle time.
GTK 3.0 for the GUI

Installation
I recommend installing via pipx:
pipx install wage-labor-record

Usage
wlr

Development Resources

Gtk 3.0 API Documentation
PyGObject tutorial
Python GTK+ 3 tutorial
How to install PyGObject

Making a Release
python -m build
twine upload dist/*

Hint: use token as username and the token from pypi.org as password.
Alternatives to this and why they don't work for me

jupyter-timetracker - GUI too complex/too close to DB editing tools. No support for clients
tim CLI only, no idle time detection but uses hledger as a backend!
salary-timetracker CLI only, tracking bound to git repos, fixed hourly rate but hey it uses CSV files!
ttrac CLI only, no idle time detection, no support for clients or tasks but uses JSON files!
tickertock only with a StreamDeck, wants to use cloud service as backend but uses a hardware interface!
mttt CLI only, no idle time detection but uses plain text files!
tt-cli CLI only, no idle time detection, no support for clients
timetracker CLI only, no idle time detection, no support for clients
hamster comes pretty close but seems outdated/abandoned and a little bit too complex