Dates and durations

Use compact date expressions for due times, scheduled starts, recurrence intervals, and tracker slots.

Overview

Im accepts ISO dates, UK-style day-first dates, clock times, and a focused set of relative expressions such as tomorrow 9am and 3 days ago.

Basics

Write a date or time

Example	Meaning
2026-08-14	An ISO calendar date
14/08/2026	Day/month/year
14 August 2026	Day, month name, and year
8pm or 20:00	A time today
tomorrow 9am	Tomorrow at 09:00
next friday eod	The end of next Friday
3 days ago	Three days before now
2 hours later	Two hours after now
start or eod	The beginning or end of today

Expressions are case-insensitive for month names, weekdays, ago, later, hence, start, and end.

Note: Slash dates are day-first. 9/11 means 9 November, not September 11.

Use dates in tasks and views

A oneshot due time follows its name:

im ! Pay rent @28/08/2026

A scheduled task starts with @ and ends its name field at ::

im ! @tomorrow 9am :planning %90m

The today view accepts the same expressions after @:

im @yesterday
im @2026-08-14

A view anchor selects the whole day even if the expression includes a time.

Choose a duration

Fixed durations are used for scheduled availability windows and tracker bounds:

30m   2h   1h 30m   2 days

Recurring task intervals and tracker intervals accept calendar-aware spans such as 1 month, 1 week 2 days, or 6 hours. Calendar intervals follow the local calendar, so month lengths and daylight-saving changes do not turn into a fixed number of seconds.

Keep expressions complete

A date field must be one complete expression. Use the scheduled-task markers when a name follows a time:

im ! @10pm :late meeting %1h

Do not add connectors such as at or in; use tomorrow 9am rather than tomorrow at 9am.

Reference

Accepted date forms include:

• now, today, yesterday, tomorrow, y, and yesterweek
• weekdays such as fri, next monday, and last fri 9:30
• month names and day-month forms such as April, 4 July, and next 10 Dec
• relative values such as -3, 3d, 2 weeks ago, and 6 months hence
• clocks such as 18:03, 18:03:40, 6.03pm, and 12am
• ISO offsets such as 2026-08-14T18:00Z or 2026-08-14 18:00 +02:00

Use eod or end for the last moment of a day and start for midnight.

FAQ

Why did 12am not mean noon?

Im treats 12am as midnight and 12pm as noon.

Should I use m for months?

No. In short duration forms, m means minutes. Write mo or month for a calendar month interval.

Why was my date rejected even though it looked readable?

Im intentionally accepts a small expression language rather than unrestricted natural language. Remove connectors and articles, use numeric dates or supported month and weekday names, and keep compound date expressions to the documented forms.