Tasks: automatic to-dos from your recordings

How do tasks get into InstantOwl?

Two ways: automatically, from what you say, and manually, when you want to add one yourself.

Automatic extraction

Every recording is scanned for action items as part of processing, alongside the transcript and your output document. InstantOwl pulls out up to 25 action items per recording, so a long planning ramble won't get truncated to a handful of bullets. If you mention a due date out loud, like "get this to the team by Friday," it's resolved into a real calendar date using the day you recorded as "today," not left as vague text.

You'll see these under Action Items on the recording page. Each row has a checkbox, expands to an editable title and free-form description, has its own due-date editor and project picker, a delete button, and a Calendar download that appears once a due date is set. There's also an Add task action for anything the AI missed. The section header tells you where you stand at a glance: "N open" or "All done."

Manual entry

You don't need a recording to add a task. On the Tasks page, the quick-add bar has a text field ("Add a task…"), a mic button for adding one by voice, a due-date field that parses natural language (placeholder "Due (e.g. fri, tomorrow)"), a project dropdown with an inline + New project… option, a high-priority toggle, and Add.

Working the Tasks page

The Tasks page gives you two views, List and Calendar, toggled at the top and remembered the next time you visit.

1. Filter by project using the pills across the top: All, Unassigned, then one pill per project with its color dot and count.
2. Scan by due bucket: tasks group under Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, This week, Later, and No date, so you always see what's urgent first.
3. Reorder within the Today, Tomorrow, and No date buckets by dragging a task to a new position.
4. Complete a task with the checkbox. Completed tasks collapse under "Completed (N)" with an Undo on each row, so a stray tap isn't permanent.
5. Edit any task in full at its own detail page, or adjust the due date and project inline from the row.

If you arrive at Tasks from a project page, the list is pre-filtered to that project.

Exporting a task to your calendar

InstantOwl does not have live two-way calendar sync. What it does have: any task with a due date shows a Calendar button that downloads an .ics file for that single task. Open it (or import it) in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or anything else that reads .ics files, and it drops in with the right date. It's a one-way, per-task export, not a connected calendar account, so changes you make in InstantOwl afterward won't push back out automatically. If you update a due date, download the .ics again.

Tips

• Say due dates out loud the way you'd say them to a person. "By Friday," "next Tuesday," "end of month" all resolve correctly.
• If you're speaking through a plan with several sub-steps, InstantOwl will usually split them into separate action items rather than one giant task, up to the 25-item ceiling per recording.
• Pair tasks with projects so your Tasks filters mirror how you already think about your work.
• For a faster capture habit that keeps feeding this list, see how brain dumping works.