Project Overview

The backlog overview command provides project-level task statistics as plain text, suitable for quickly checking project status in the terminal or for use in scripts and CI pipelines.

Launching Overview

Interactive TUI

Run directly in a TTY-capable terminal:

backlog overview

The system outputs an ANSI-colored terminal interface containing status distribution, priority distribution, recent activity, and project health. Use the terminal's native scrollbar or mouse wheel to browse all content.

Plain-Text Output

Use --plain mode in non-interactive environments or when piping:

backlog overview --plain

Plain-text mode does not output ANSI color codes, making it suitable for redirecting to files or piping to other commands:

backlog overview --plain > project-status.txt
backlog overview --plain | grep "Overdue"

Output Content

The overview command output includes the following dimensions:

Status Overview

Status Overview
===============
  To Do: 12 tasks (40%)
  In Progress: 8 tasks (27%)
  Done: 10 tasks (33%)

  Total Tasks: 30
  Completion: 33%

Shows task counts and percentages per status, plus total task count and overall completion rate.

Priority Breakdown

Priority Breakdown
==================
  high     5  17%
  medium   15 50%
  low      7  23%
  none     3  10%

Statistics by high / medium / low / no priority.

Recent Activity

Recent Activity
===============
Recently Created
----------------
  TASK-32 - Add user authentication module

Recently Updated
----------------
  TASK-28 - Optimize database queries

Lists tasks created and updated in the last 7 days.

Project Health

Project Health
==============
  Average Task Age: 12 days
  At Risk: 2   Overdue: 1   Stale: 3   Blocked: 1

At Risk Tasks: (due soon, require immediate attention)
------------------------------------------------------
  TASK-15 - Complete API docs

Overdue Tasks: (passed the due date)
------------------------------------
  TASK-7 - Fix login timeout

Stale Tasks: (No updates for 30+ days, no due date set)
--------------------------------------------------------
  TASK-3 - Research third-party libraries

Blocked Tasks: (waiting on dependencies)
----------------------------------------
  TASK-11 - Integrate payment gateway

The health section aligns with the Web statistics page and shows:

• Average task age: average number of days all tasks have existed
• Average task duration: average completion time in minutes and sample size for tasks in canonical terminal statuses. The span definition is fully consistent with Gantt chart Actual Start / Actual End; completion only counts canonical terminal statuses—Done is included in the sample, abandoned terminal statuses such as Dropped do not count as completed. Duration distribution is strongly right-skewed, so sample size is also shown
• At Risk: tasks due today or tomorrow
• Overdue: tasks past the due date
• Stale: tasks without a due date and not updated for more than 30 days
• Blocked: tasks with uncompleted dependencies

Specific task IDs and titles are listed under each category.

Statistics Corpus Scope

overview counts only active tasks by default (non-empty status under backlog/tasks/). Consistent with the "Completed corpus" toggle on the Web statistics page, add --completed to include historical completed records (backlog/completed/) in the sample—metrics such as average task duration switch corpus accordingly:

backlog overview --plain --completed

Pure-date due dates are parsed and displayed as the local-time-zone day: in any time zone, dueDate: 2026-09-20 is shown as September 20 and will not shift to the previous or next day due to UTC conversion. Created/updated timestamps with time are still stored as UTC and displayed in local time.

Relationship to the Web Statistics Page

Both use the same underlying statistics logic (src/core/statistics.ts), so the data is fully consistent.