batguano

I work with a stack that’s pretty brittle, and in a constant state of flux. As such, I spend most of my time fixing broken compiles, chasing down problems that are red herrings (e.g., my branch suddenly has a test failing, but it turns out that’s totally unrelated to my changes), etc. I spend only a small fraction of my time on the actual “business logic” (aka “useful work”).

I would love to be able to track this stuff, so at the end-of-the-week standup I have a better idea where all my time went.

I’m looking for a good tool to help me do this. Here’s the most important features:

1) Voice dictation, so I can say things like, “I’m now rebasing and recompiling the whole codebase, because test X is now broken and I haven’t changed anything that should affect it.” Taking text notes wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, but voice dictation seems like it would work better.

2) The ability to ask for an AI-based weekly summary. e.g.,

  - You finished the AAA refactor and got that installed.
  - you spent a full day and a half on spinning your wheels on BBB because of the change to CCC
  - you paired with Alice to debug DDD
  - you helped Bob fix his problem with EEE
  - while working on FFF, you found a problem with GGG and preemptively fixed it

I’m not a contractor working on multiple client projects, so this isn’t a billing thing. I just find at the end of the week, I’m disappointed in how much stuff got closed. I forget all the friction points and distractions that sucked up time—as well as lots of little wins!

Would appreciate hearing how others approach this problem.