Your school year in text files
A homework diary is a book with one page per day, and that is exactly what tagwerk is — except the page is a text file named after its date, and it can be asked questions. This guide walks a school year through it: homework, the timetable, tests, marks. It also says which parts cost money and which do not, because half of what is described here is free and the other half is not, and you should know which is which before you start.
The homework diary
Write it down in the lesson, while it is being said. The first characters of a line decide what it becomes — nothing has to be set up first:
Notes/2026/09/2026-09-17.md
08:00-08:45 Maths #maths
08:50-09:35 English #english
- [>] Maths: worksheet, exercises 3 to 5 #maths >2026-09-21
- [>] English: read up to page 40 #english >2026-09-20
- [ ] 15:00 Vocabulary, unit 3 R/P1D #english
- [ ] Get the trip form signed !
--- Afternoon ---
- [ ] Football, remember the boots
- [>] … >2026-09-21 moves a task to another day, and
that is the whole trick of a homework diary: put it on the day you are going to do it,
not on the day it is handed in. The copy lands there, the trail stays on the day it was
set, and the two together answer “when did she actually give us this?”.
A time in front of a task — - [ ] 15:00 Vocabulary —
means “not before”. The task list leaves it alone until three in the afternoon and says
underneath how many it is holding back; the note shows it all day. Homework that stayed
open shows up as overdue until you finish it, drop it or move it on.
On Android there is a second, small widget for the home screen that does nothing but take a line and put it into today's note. That is the one for the last thirty seconds of a lesson. It is free, like the widget that shows today's tasks and everything overdue.
The timetable, typed once
A timetable stays the same for a year, so it belongs in a template rather than in your
fingers. The files in templates/, next to your notes,
say what a new day starts with — one per weekday, and the file names are English
whatever language you use tagwerk in:
templates/template-thursday.md
08:00-08:45 Maths #maths
08:50-09:35 Biology #bio
09:55-10:40 German #german
--- Afternoon ---
Every Thursday you open for the first time now starts like that, and you only write what
actually happened on it. template.md covers the days
that have no file of their own. Templates are part of Pro.
Lessons that are every other week are the one thing a weekday template cannot do — it is the same every week by definition. Write those into the line instead, as a repeat with a two-week interval and a starting date:
11:00-12:30 Chemistry lab R/2026-09-10/P2W #chem
Be clear about what that does: the calendar draws the lesson on every second Thursday, including on days whose file does not exist yet — but it does not write itself into those notes, so the text of a B-week day stays as empty as you left it. The day view of the calendar is free; week, month and agenda are part of Pro.
Tests, and the days before them
A test is a date you want to see coming, and revision is a task that repeats a known number of times. Both are one line each:
- [ ] Maths test, chapters 1 to 3 ! >2026-10-12 - [ ] Revise for the maths test R6/P1D #maths - [ ] Vocabulary, unit 3 R/P1D #english
R6/P1D is “six more times, once a day”: ticking it off
puts the next one on tomorrow, and after the sixth it is done and gone.
R/P1D without a number keeps going until you stop it.
! marks something important,
~ something that can wait, and a date written anywhere in a
line without the > sign —
2026-10-12 — is a link to that day that moves nothing.
Which subject a line belongs to is what #maths is for.
Tags can nest, so #maths/geometry is filed under
#maths. Filtering your whole list down to one subject is
part of Pro; searching for it is free and always will be.
Marks
A tag can carry a number after a colon. That is all a mark is, and it means you never keep a second list:
Maths test back #grade:2 #maths French vocab test #grade:3 #french
The statistics then answer what those numbers do: how many there are, the best and the worst, the average, the median and how they run over time. That evaluation is part of Pro. Without it the marks stay in your notes, in plain sight and findable by search — nothing is hidden from you, and nothing is deleted.
A reading belongs to the day it was written on. If a task moves to another day or repeats, the copy takes the tag along but not the number — so a mark cannot accidentally be counted twice.
What you need, and what it costs
An Android phone, and nothing else — no account, no sign-up, no e-mail address. tagwerk works on the day you install it, and the free version is not a trial and does not run out.
- Free: the whole syntax, every day, in your own files. Today's tasks and everything overdue. The day view of the calendar. Full-text search across every day. The revision history, which brings back a note you wrecked. A ZIP export of everything. The widget for today and the one for quick capture.
- Pro, €12 / US$12 once: the task list across all days with its filters and the look ahead, the week, month and agenda views, day templates — your timetable —, the statistics behind your marks, sync inside the app, colours for tags.
Pro is bought in the app through Google Play. If your Google account is supervised by a parent, the purchase needs their approval, which is worth knowing before you get as far as the button. What the purchase leaves behind is a small signed file next to your notes; if your notes are synced anywhere, that file travels with them and unlocks your other devices by itself — the licence page explains the rest.
Your notes stay yours
There is no account, no advertising and no tracking, and nothing you write is sent to us — we run no server your notes could sit on. The files are ordinary Markdown, so they open in any editor later, on a laptop, in five years, without tagwerk. You can export the lot as a ZIP whenever you want, and the revision history is free on purpose: it is what stands between a mistake and a lost note.
One thing about Android is worth saying plainly, because it is not obvious. While your notes sit in the app's own folder — which is where they start — Android's own backup includes them in the Google backup of your phone. That is what gets your notes back when the phone is lost. Pick a folder of your own instead, through the system folder picker, and they are outside that backup; then whatever you sync that folder with is the only copy that leaves the device. The app's settings, its history and the sync password are never in the backup either way.
The complete rules of the file format are written down in the format specification — not as marketing, but so that the files stay readable by other programs, and by you.
What tagwerk is not
It does not import your timetable from WebUntis and it does not read your school's platform. Nothing in it is shared: there is no class, no group, no way to send homework to somebody or to see what a classmate wrote. It is your notebook, and it holds what you decide to write in it — which also means nobody else can see it.
Android is the reference platform; Android, Windows and Linux are the released apps, Linux free and from the Snap Store. iOS and macOS are planned, with no date yet.
Something missing here, or something wrong? Write to , or open an issue in the tracker.