DEV Community: Dominik Kopócs

Glyph.Flow DevLog #5 — From Alpha to First Release (v0.1.0)

Dominik Kopócs — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 22:25:02 +0000

It finally happened: Glyph.Flow reached its first non-alpha release.
When I started this little side project, knowing myself I didn’t expect to carry it this far. But after weeks of tinkering, refactoring, and fixing weird edge cases, I can finally call this one a proper release: v0.1.0. 🎉

🚀 What’s new in 0.1.0?

This release is about moving from “hacky alpha playground” into a usable foundation.

✨ Added

test command: runs automated checks for file integrity, configuration, and command functionality.
bigsample command: generates a large project tree for stress-testing.
New simple themes (crimson, arctic, desert) + hotkey T to switch between them.
Config now stores your last used theme.
A footer help bar with hotkeys, and it highlights itself when hotkeys are active.
Header info field showing project stats (total, completed, ongoing).

🔧 Improved

Cleaner command handlers.
Better internal messages.

🐛 Fixed

PDF export now properly handles CJK/Cyrillic characters.
Logs no longer get restored incorrectly after running clear + panel reconfig.

🧩 Lessons learned along the way

Undo/redo isn’t trivial: It’s easy to code “Ctrl+Z”, but making it memory-friendly and configurable took serious work.
Export quirks: Supporting multilingual output in PDF sounded trivial until it wasn’t. Unicode fonts and encodings fight back.
Theme switching: Handling Textual events and redrawing components was harder than I thought. It works now, but it’s just the first step toward a full theme engine.
And of course, the “easy” bugs are the ones that eat your entire day. Or night in my case...

👉 Check out the project here: GitHub

🛠 Roadmap ahead

The foundation is here, but I’ve got plenty of plans:

Advanced search filters (by type, regex, tags, date ranges).
Profiles: separate workspaces for different projects.
A proper theme engine.
Expanded TUI interface with dashboard, statistics, and menu navigation.

💡 Closing thoughts

This is the first non-alpha release, but it’s still just the beginning.
I’m excited to keep pushing this forward, and I’d love to hear feedback, ideas, or wild feature requests.

Glyph.Flow Devlog #4 – Import/Export, Config Overhaul, and the Road to 0.1.0

Dominik Kopócs — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 23:43:15 +0000

Two weeks ago I shared how Glyph.Flow reached a big milestone with the introduction of undo/redo feature. Now it’s time for another big step: v0.1.0a9 just landed, bringing import/export support and a completely revamped config and context system. This is the last alpha release before we hit the first real milestone: 0.1.0.

## 🚀 What’s new in v0.1.0a9

Import/Export – You can now move your Glyph.Flow data between sessions or machines with ease.
Export to JSON, CSV, or PDF.
Import JSON files with three modes: replace, append, or merge.
Config Overhaul – A brand new config handler makes settings more flexible and transparent. Cleaner initialization, clearer defaults, and better ergonomics.
Two-step Context Initialization – This lays the groundwork for more flexible UI handling and future TUI improvements.
Quality of life – More command aliases and some early bug fixes (like startup errors when data folders are missing).

👉 Full changelog here.

## 🛠️ Why this matters

Glyph.Flow is meant to be a minimalist workflow manager that still covers the essentials:

Portability (import/export makes it practical across machines).
Safety (undo/redo keeps mistakes reversible).
Transparency (config you can actually read and tweak).

Each alpha has been about laying these bricks. With a9, the walls are up. Next step: add the roof.

## 🌌 The road to 0.1.0

(Probably) next Friday I’ll be releasing v0.1.0, the first proper milestone. It won’t yet have the fancy TUI everyone is waiting for (or just me 😆), but it will be the point where Glyph.Flow transitions from “proof of concept” to “usable workflow manager.”

## Planned for 0.1.0:

Final polish on import/export and whole backend.
Stability pass on config handling.
README/Getting Started overhaul.
And then we can start looking beyond: TUI layouts, dashboards, and advanced search features.

If you like the idea of a minimalist, keyboard-driven workflow manager in your terminal, now’s the time to jump in:

- ⭐ Star the repo to follow along.
- 🐛 Try it and tell me what’s broken.
- 💡 Suggest features you’d want before 0.2.0.

👉 GitHub Repo

Next stop: 0.1.0 milestone. See you Friday. 🚀

Glyph.Flow Devlog #3 – Splitting Logs & UI Glow

Dominik Kopócs — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:15:57 +0000

Glyph.Flow just reached v0.1.0a7 🎉

This update focused on making the app more usable and a bit nicer to look at:

✨ Highlights

Dual-log system → one log for system/runtime messages, one for command output.
Animated panel adjustment (adjust) → smoothly toggle between log/output focus.
Custom RichLog with buffering + reflow on resize.
New header with live config info (version, autosave, logging) + pixelart logo.
Fixed the startup crash when no data.json was present.

The project is starting to feel more like a real TUI app and less like a wall of text. 🚀
Repo: GitHub

Glyph.Flow Devlog #2 – Hitting the Registry Milestone

Dominik Kopócs — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 21:00:39 +0000

Last time I shared why I’m building Glyph.Flow, a minimalist workflow manager in the terminal with Textual.
This week it’s time for an update on what I managed to get done.

GitHub

🎯 The Big Goal

I wanted to move from a rough prototype into something modular and extensible.
That meant one thing: a command registry.

🔨 What Changed This Week

Backend refactor: my massive 630-line app.py is now down to ~112 lines. Commands live in a registry, not tangled logic.

Command registry: all commands are defined declaratively, with schema-based argument parsing, aliases, and usage.

Logging: unified styling and message keys, with autosave and error handling standardized.

New config command: quick way to tweak settings on the fly.

Consistency: adding a new command is now just “add a dict + handler”.

😅 The Feeling

It finally behaves like a real CLI app instead of a spaghetti prototype — but I’ll be honest, it’s still a prototype.
The difference is: now the foundation feels stable enough to build on.

⏭️ What’s Next

More commands to migrate (delete, edit, schema, …).

Road toward a TUI interface on top of this backend.

Eventually, I’d like this to feel like a natural console companion for managing projects.

That’s it for this week’s log.
If you’re into command-line tools, or building things with Textual, I’d love to hear your feedback. 🚀

Glyph.Flow Devlog #1 – Why I’m Building a Workflow App in a TUI?

Dominik Kopócs — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 13:59:42 +0000

"Why build yet another workflow app? And why on earth in a TUI?"

That’s the question I asked myself when I started this project.

Over the years, I’ve tried countless tools – task trackers, kanban boards, Notion setups – but most of them felt heavy, clicky, or distracting. I wanted something much simpler: a workflow manager that lives entirely in the terminal, fully keyboard-driven, fast, and with zero context switching.

At first, I hacked together a prototype using plain curses. It worked… kind of. But as the project grew, I realized I needed something more structured and maintainable. That’s when I discovered Textual, and decided to port everything over.

So far, Glyph.Flow can:

define hierarchical workflows (Project → Phase → Task → Subtask),
save/load the entire structure as JSON,
render trees, tables, and ASCII views,
and handle commands like create, edit, delete, search, toggle.

The latest milestone (v0.1.0a4) brought two major improvements:

a layered logging system with INFO/WARNING/ERROR/SUCCESS/HELP levels
a command history module, so you can navigate previous inputs with the arrow keys.

Why might this be interesting?
👌🏻 Minimalism. Unlike most project managers, Glyph.Flow only cares about hierarchy and progress.

</> Terminal-native. It feels more like working with your projects than managing them through a UI.

👨🏻‍💻 Personal journey. For me, this is not just a tool. It’s a playground to learn Textual, experiment with structured logging, and design clean extensible systems.

Next steps:

Command registry (auto-help, cleaner dispatch)
Undo system (basic memento stack)
Better error handling
Export/import & statistics
And eventually… a polished Textual TUI dashboard

This is still very alpha, but it’s already fun to use, and I’m excited to share the journey here.

👉 You can check out the repo here: GitHub
👉 Follow this series for future devlogs: Glyph.Flow Devlog #2 will be all about the command registry!

These changes laid the foundation for the next big step: the command registry, which will finally eliminate the infamous elif chain and make adding new commands a one-file operation.