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Black Candle Wiki / OpenMGMT / Getting started with OpenMGMT

Getting started with OpenMGMT

What OpenMGMT is

OpenMGMT is a lightweight, local-first desktop project and task manager. Your data lives in a SQLite database on your own machine — there is no required cloud account and no hosted service in the loop for daily use.

Work is organized into organizations and projects. Tasks carry priority, scheduling, pinning, tags, estimates, and time limits; starting a task starts a timer based on started_at, and a tunable urgency score decides what the board shows you first. The seven-column board auto-shifts tasks as their state changes, and a dedicated TV board window gives you a glanceable live view with 10-second auto-refresh.

The desktop app is one Rust codebase: a Tauri v2 native shell around a Leptos (Rust/WASM) interface. No Electron, no Node.js, no browser tab pretending to be an app.

Install the desktop app

There are no packaged downloads yet — while the first release is prepared, the desktop app is built from source:

git clone https://github.com/black-candle-technologies/openmgmt.git
cd openmgmt/apps/desktop/src-tauri
cargo tauri dev

You need Rust, the Tauri v2 prerequisites for your OS, the wasm32-unknown-unknown target, tauri-cli, and trunk. cargo tauri build produces a native installer (NSIS on Windows, DMG on macOS).

In development the database lives at data/openmgmt.sqlite; installed builds use your OS's per-user app data directory.

Your first project

  1. Create an organization (your company, or "Personal"), then a project inside it.
  2. Add tasks with priorities, due dates, tags, and estimates.
  3. Start a task when you begin work — the timer runs until you complete, block, or cancel it.
  4. Watch the board: tasks move across the seven columns as their state and urgency change.

Blocked tasks stay visible instead of silently rotting — unblock them when the dependency clears and they rejoin the flow.

Next steps

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