things-mac

A macOS skill for managing Things 3, a task-management app, through its command-line tool and local task database.

In plain words
What is it for?
Adding or updating todos, viewing the inbox, today list, and upcoming tasks, searching tasks, and listing projects, areas, or tags.
Why use it?
It lets an agent read and update tasks without manually navigating the Things 3 app. It also brings related tasks, projects, areas, and tags into command-line workflows.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/the-open-agent/openagent/things-mac
Any agent
npx skills add the-open-agent/openagent --skill things-mac
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/the-open-agent/openagent

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 988 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 92% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00069 $0.00988
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00494
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00198
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00099

Measured 3d ago against content hash 5a04111134fd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

things-mac scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

92% identical to things-mac — 6 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/things-mac/SKILL.md · 87 lines

What it actually says

Things 3 CLI

Use things to read your local Things database (inbox/today/search/projects/areas/tags) and to add/update todos via the Things URL scheme.

Setup

  • Install (recommended, Apple Silicon): GOBIN=/opt/homebrew/bin go install github.com/ossianhempel/things3-cli/cmd/things@latest
  • If DB reads fail: grant Full Disk Access to the calling app (Terminal for manual runs; OpenClaw.app for gateway runs).
  • Optional: set THINGSDB (or pass --db) to point at your ThingsData-* folder.
  • Optional: set THINGS_AUTH_TOKEN to avoid passing --auth-token for update ops.

Read-only (DB)

  • things inbox --limit 50
  • things today
  • things upcoming
  • things search "query"
  • things projects / things areas / things tags

Write (URL scheme)

  • Prefer safe preview: things --dry-run add "Title"
  • Add: things add "Title" --notes "..." --when today --deadline 2026-01-02
  • Bring Things to front: things --foreground add "Title"

Examples: add a todo

  • Basic: things add "Buy milk"
  • With notes: things add "Buy milk" --notes "2% + bananas"
  • Into a project/area: things add "Book flights" --list "Travel"
  • Into a project heading: things add "Pack charger" --list "Travel" --heading "Before"
  • With tags: things add "Call dentist" --tags "health,phone"
  • Checklist: things add "Trip prep" --checklist-item "Passport" --checklist-item "Tickets"
  • From STDIN (multi-line => title + notes):
    • cat <<'EOF' | things add -
    • Title line
    • Notes line 1
    • Notes line 2
    • EOF

Examples: modify a todo (needs auth token)

  • First: get the ID (UUID column): things search "milk" --limit 5
  • Auth: set THINGS_AUTH_TOKEN or pass --auth-token <TOKEN>
  • Title: things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> "New title"
  • Notes replace: things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --notes "New notes"
  • Notes append/prepend: things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --append-notes "..." / --prepend-notes "..."
  • Move lists: things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --list "Travel" --heading "Before"
  • Tags replace/add: things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --tags "a,b" / things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --add-tags "a,b"
  • Complete/cancel (soft-delete-ish): things update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --completed / --canceled
  • Safe preview: things --dry-run update --id <UUID> --auth-token <TOKEN> --completed

Delete a todo?

  • Not supported by things3-cli right now (no “delete/move-to-trash” write command; things trash is read-only listing).
  • Options: use Things UI to delete/trash, or mark as --completed / --canceled via things update.

Notes

  • macOS-only.
  • --dry-run prints the URL and does not open Things.
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 87 lines · 69 tokens per session scan A 5a04111134fd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

things-mac is a skill published in the GitHub repository the-open-agent/openagent (5,596 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 988 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 92% identical to things-mac, differing in 6 lines, and is treated as a copy.