This chapter gives a brief overview of the most important terms in TandemLoop. You’ll find a more detailed glossary with all terms and cross-references in the appendix under Glossary.
Table of Terms
| Term | Meaning | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Area | The top-level organizing element—a big area of your life or work, such as “Work” or “Personal.” Contains folders, projects, and standalone tasks. | Areas |
| Folder | An optional intermediate level within an area for grouping related projects. | Folders |
| Project | A focused undertaking with a goal and several tasks. Always belongs to exactly one area, optionally inside a folder. | Projects |
| Milestone | A phase or interim goal within a project. Contains tasks and helps structure larger projects. | Milestones |
| Task | The smallest unit of work—what you do and check off. Lives in a project, a milestone, directly in an area (as a standalone task), or in the Inbox. | Tasks |
| Inbox | The catch-all for everything new, outside the hierarchy. You can calmly sort everything you capture there later. | Inbox & Quick Entry |
| Standalone task | A task assigned directly to an area or folder—without a parent project. | Standalone Tasks |
| Tag | A freely definable keyword that you can assign to tasks, projects, and milestones. Tags can be arranged hierarchically in a tree. | Tags |
| View | A saved view with its own filter, sorting, and grouping. Shows you tasks, projects, or milestones across all areas according to your rules. | What Is a View? |
| Proposal | A structural suggestion from the AI. A proposal lists concrete changes—you decide whether and which of them are applied. | What Are Proposals? |
| Data folder | The folder on your device where TandemLoop stores all data as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter. No lock-in, readable by other tools. | The Data Folder & File Format |
| AI tool | An external, agentic AI program (for example, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI) that you start yourself and let access your data folder. TandemLoop doesn’t include its own AI. | Connecting an AI Tool |
| AI Tandem | The interplay between you and a connected AI tool: The tool creates proposals and helps you structure your work—you always keep the final say. | Connecting an AI Tool |
Detailed glossary: This table is only a first overview. Definitions, distinctions, and technical details for all terms are in the Glossary at the end of the manual.