If you've just opened DoneAgo for the first time, you might be wondering how the whole thing actually works. The app is built on three simple ideas: cards, trackers, and states. Once these click, everything else in the app makes sense on its own.
How does DoneAgo work, in one sentence?
You track how long it's been since you last did something, instead of scheduling when to do it next. That's the whole model. Cards, trackers, and states are just the three layers that make that possible.
What is a card?
A card is a group of related trackers. Think of it as a folder, or a room. "Home," "Kitchen," "Self-Care," "Plants," whatever grouping makes sense to you. A card doesn't do anything on its own, it just holds trackers together so your home screen isn't one long, unsorted list.
You can have as many cards as you want, and a tracker only lives inside one card at a time.
What is a tracker?
A tracker is the actual thing you're keeping tabs on: watering the plant, vacuuming the living room, taking your medication. Each tracker sits inside a card and holds its own elapsed-time record, its own states, and its own history.
This is the part that's different from a to-do list. A tracker doesn't get "completed" and disappear. It just keeps recording how long it's been since you last logged it, indefinitely.
What is a state?
A state is the current condition of a tracker, described in your own words. When you log the tracker, it switches state and the elapsed-time counter resets to zero. As time passes, you might switch it yourself, or, if you've got automation turned on, DoneAgo can switch it for you once a set amount of time has passed.
Single-state vs multi-state trackers
Not every tracker needs more than one state, and DoneAgo supports both.
A single-state tracker has just one state, usually something like Done. There's nothing to choose between, you tap it, the counter resets to zero, and that's the whole interaction. This fits things where "done" is the only condition that exists: took a break, called mom, backed up the laptop. There's no in-between state to track, just the fact that it happened and how long ago.
A multi-state tracker has two or more distinct states that the thing can actually be in. Watering a plant is the clean example: it's either Watered or it's Pending. Those are two real, different conditions, not just "done". This is where multi-state makes sense, tasks or things that genuinely sit in one of several states at any given time, like Clean, Needs Attention, or Overdue for something that degrades in stages.
The rule of thumb: if the thing only ever has one state worth naming, like Done, use single-state. If it can genuinely be in more than one distinct condition, like Watered vs Pending, use multi-state to actually represent that.
How do the three fit together?
Here's a concrete example. Say you create a card called "Kitchen." Inside it, you add a multi-state tracker called "Dishes," with two states: Clear and Pending. Every time you actually do the dishes, you tap Clear. The tracker resets to zero and starts counting up again from there. A week later, your Kitchen card shows you exactly how long it's been, no guessing, no separate reminder you had to set.
You might also be wondering
Can one card hold trackers about totally different things? Yes. There's no rule that a card has to be a single room or category, it's just a grouping that makes sense to you.
Do I need automation to use states? No. Automation is optional and lets states switch on their own after a time window. Without it, you switch states manually whenever you check in.
Is a state the same as a task being "done"? Not quite. A completed to-do disappears. A state just describes where things currently stand, and it can switch back and forth indefinitely, which is the whole point.
Should I start with single-state or multi-state trackers? If you're new to DoneAgo, single-state is the easier starting point since there's less to set up. You can always convert a tracker to multi-state later once you know you want more detail than just the elapsed time.