mysticals (terminal)

Mysticals for the terminal on macOS, Linux and Windows: one calendar view over several Google and CalDAV accounts that stay isolated from each other. It's a separate app from the desktop (Electron) Mysticals, with its own accounts, settings and credentials, so you can run both on the same machine.

Website: https://mysticals.sashkoratushnyi.com · Source: https://github.com/a1exalexander/mysticals

Install

npm i -g mysticals
mysticals

Needs Node.js 20.3 or newer. mysticals --help lists options, mysticals --version prints the version.

The first run shows a welcome: press s (or click it) to add a Google, iCloud, Fastmail or other CalDAV account. ? lists every key.

• macOS: nothing else. The credential key goes in the Keychain; notifications use osascript.
• Linux: secret-tool (package libsecret-tools on Debian/Ubuntu, libsecret on Fedora/Arch) and a running keyring such as GNOME Keyring or KWallet. Optional: notify-send for notifications, xdg-open to open Google sign-in in the browser.
• Windows: nothing else. The credential key is sealed with DPAPI and notifications are toasts, both through the built-in Windows PowerShell.

It checks npm for a newer version once a day and shows a hint in the status line; update with npm i -g mysticals.

Try it without real accounts:

MYSTICALS_MOCK=1 mysticals                  # macOS, Linux
$env:MYSTICALS_MOCK=1; mysticals            # Windows PowerShell
set "MYSTICALS_MOCK=1" && mysticals         # Windows cmd

Keys

The underlined letter of each view tab is its key.

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | a d 2 w m | Agenda / Day / 2 Days / Week / Month view | | ← → (or h l) | Day, 2 Days, Week, Month: previous / next day, selecting its event closest to the same time. Agenda: previous / next event | | ↑ ↓ | Day, 2 Days, Week: previous / next event of the selected day. Month: previous / next event in time order. Agenda: previous / next event | | j k | Next / previous event in time order | | Shift ← → (or H L) | Previous / next page (moving past the edge of a page pages too) | | t | Today | | enter | Open the selected event | | n | New event | | i | Invitations (y accept, n decline, m maybe) | | s | Accounts and calendars | | r | Sync now | | ? | Help | | q | Quit (esc or q closes an open panel first) |

In an open event:

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | y n m | Accept / decline / maybe (invitations only) | | o | Open the video-call link from the event's place | | e | Edit (saving a repeating event asks 1 this, 2 this and following, 3 all; a changed repeat rule offers only 2 and 3) | | x | Delete (confirm with y; for a repeating event 1 this, 2 this and following, 3 all) | | a | Show all / fewer attendees (long guest lists) | | ↑ ↓ PgUp PgDn | Scroll an event that doesn't fit on screen | | esc q | Close |

In text fields (new or edited event, adding a CalDAV account, renaming an account) ← → move the cursor, home end (or ctrl+a ctrl+e) jump to the start or end, and ctrl+u erases everything before the cursor. esc on an event you changed asks before dropping the changes.

The bottom bar has two rows. The first shows what's on now, the next event within 24 hours, the number of pending invites, and accounts whose last sync failed. The second has buttons for new, sync, invites, accounts, help and quit, followed by a reminder of how to move and open events.

The agenda shows each day as a heading (relative day, event count, busy time) followed by two-line event cards: start and end time, a bar in the calendar's colour, the title with badges (● now · ends in 25m, in 25m for the next one today, RSVP, maybe, declined), and a detail line (account · calendar, ↻ repeats, ⚠ overlaps, place or video call, number of people). Days without events collapse into free rows.

Day, 2 Days and Week are time-grid tables: one row per hour, a column per day, all-day events on top. Events are blocks in their calendar's colour. The current time is red: the clock in the hour column, a red line through today's free cells, a red line between past and upcoming events in the agenda, and today's date in the month grid.

Colours come from your terminal theme: the app only uses the 16 ANSI colours and reverse video, and each calendar's colour is snapped to the nearest ANSI hue. NO_COLOR=1 turns colours off.

Mouse

Everything with a key also works with a click: view tabs, ‹ today ›, the buttons in the bottom bar, the key buttons at the bottom of each panel, and the parts of the info row (now/next event, invites, failed sync). Click an event to select it and click it again to open it. Click a day heading to open that day. The scroll wheel scrolls the agenda, the hours of the time grid, and panels that are longer than the screen.

At 100 columns or wider, the agenda, day and 2 days views show the selected event in a pane on the right. With nothing selected it shows what's on now or next, preferring a timed event over an all-day one.

Panels that don't fit (a long event description, many calendars) scroll and keep their buttons on screen. The app needs at least 40×12 cells and asks for a bigger window below that.

mysticals runs in the terminal's alternate screen with mouse reporting on, so a plain drag no longer selects text. To select and copy, hold ⌥ Option while dragging on macOS, or Shift on most Linux and Windows terminals (Shift in some macOS terminals too). In tmux, turn on set -g mouse on to pass clicks through.

How it runs

The first mysticals you open starts a small background daemon. It holds the accounts, syncs them and shows system notifications. Every other mysticals window connects to the same daemon over a unix socket (a named pipe on Windows), so accounts are synced once, however many windows are open. The daemon stops about 3 seconds after the last window closes. Notifications only arrive while at least one window is open.

Where data lives

| What | Where | | --- | --- | | Accounts, cache, settings | mysticals-terminal in ~/Library/Application Support (macOS), %APPDATA% (Windows), $XDG_DATA_HOME or ~/.local/share (Linux) | | Daemon socket and log | daemon.sock and daemon.log in that folder (Windows: a named pipe \\.\pipe\mysticals-… and daemon.log) | | Credentials | Encrypted in that folder (AES-256-GCM). The key is in the macOS Keychain or the Linux Secret Service (service mysticals-terminal), or on Windows in master.key in that folder, sealed with DPAPI for your Windows user |

The desktop app uses its own folder and key; the two never share data. Set MYSTICALS_HOME to use another data folder (for example a second, independent profile). MYSTICALS_MOCK=1 uses a temporary folder with two fake accounts and touches nothing real.

Telemetry

Two anonymous events go to PostHog (EU): app_installed on first run and account_added when you add an account. They carry the app, version, OS, architecture and, for accounts, the provider and CalDAV preset. The only ID is random and stored in the data folder. Emails, usernames, servers, calendars and events are never sent. The first run says so in the status line. Opt out with MYSTICALS_TELEMETRY=0 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 (set it before the first window opens: windows share the background daemon, which reads it when it starts). More in the root README.

Troubleshooting

• "Could not start the mysticals daemon": read daemon.log in the data folder. A socket left behind by a crashed daemon is cleaned up automatically on the next start.
• Daemon stuck: close all mysticals windows, then pkill -f 'cli.js --daemon' (Windows: end the background node process in Task Manager) and start again.
• Linux: "Secret Service … failed": install secret-tool and make sure a keyring is running and unlocked (on a headless box, gnome-keyring-daemon --unlock).
• Keychain prompt: on first use macOS asks to allow access to the mysticals-terminal Keychain item. Choose Always Allow. If you deny it, saved credentials can't be decrypted and accounts have to be added again.
• Google sign-in not available: the build had no Google OAuth client. See below.

Development

From the repo root:

pnpm i
cp .env.example .env   # optional, for Google accounts
pnpm --filter mysticals build                      # dist/cli.js
node apps/terminal/dist/cli.js                     # run it
MYSTICALS_MOCK=1 node apps/terminal/dist/cli.js    # with fake accounts
pnpm --filter mysticals dev                        # rebuild on change
pnpm --filter mysticals test                       # unit, UI and daemon tests
pnpm --filter mysticals typecheck

After a rebuild, close every window so the old daemon exits before you test the new one.

Google OAuth client

Create a Google Cloud OAuth client of type Desktop app (steps in CONTRIBUTING.md) and put it in the repo-root .env:

MYSTICALS_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=...apps.googleusercontent.com
MYSTICALS_GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=...

The values are embedded into dist/cli.js at build time. The same variables set in the environment at runtime override them.

Publish

Releases go out from a v* tag in CI, together with the desktop app. See Releasing.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.