Add a task as fast as you can type it
Capture should never break your train of thought. Type the task in plain words, and chain a dependency or a heads up with a single character.
The UnaTask team, Building UnaTask. Jun 4, 2026. 4 min read.
The thought arrives at the worst possible moment, as it always does: mid sentence in something else, Tom suddenly remembers he needs to send the contract before he can brief the designer before the designer can start. Three linked things, crystal clear for about four seconds. If capturing them means a form with six fields, they’ll be gone before he’s filled in the second one.
The best moment to capture a task is the instant it occurs to you, and that moment is brutally short. Every bit of friction between the thought and the saved task is a chance for the thought to evaporate, and complicated capture doesn’t just slow you down, it teaches you not to bother. So the ideas you don’t write down become the work you’re surprised by later.
A little syntax goes a long way
Type the task in plain words and go. That’s the whole baseline, no syntax to learn before you can start. When you want more structure, a couple of characters do the work no menu should make you hunt for.
- Use > to add a task that depends on the one before it, capturing a whole chain in a single line.
- Use * to get a heads up when a task is completed, so you can follow work without babysitting it.
- Everything else stays plain words, nothing to memorize.
So Tom’s four second thought, “send contract > brief designer > start designs,” goes in as one line and comes out as three linked tasks in the right order. The dependency means the designer brief won’t nag him until the contract is actually sent. The chain captures itself as fast as he can think it.
The heads up character earns its keep when you’ve handed something off. Mark a task you’re waiting on, and you’ll know the moment it’s done, without pinging the person every afternoon to ask. You get to stop holding the thread in your head, which is the whole point: the tool remembers so you don’t have to.
None of it is mandatory. You can live happily on plain words forever and never touch a single symbol. But once the syntax is in your fingers, a whole sequence of work travels from your head to the app in the time it used to take to write one task. The thought still arrives mid sentence. The difference is what happens next: a single line, a couple of characters, and it’s safe, structured, and out of his head before he’s lost his place.
Capture should keep up with your typing, not interrupt it. The fastest task manager is the one that’s already done before the thought has finished forming.