[fugue88]

It sounds like you want to rewrite Sandy (http://www.iwantsandy.com/), which is good because they're closing down.

They show several examples of commands that Sandy accepts. That might help give you a little direction designing your system.

[fendale]

Actually I started this before I heard about iwantsandy.com, which I only heard about last week when it was shutting down. At that point I simultaneously thought 'damit, there is a tool to do what I wanted and here is me wasting time writing one to scratch my own itch' and 'interesting, outrage at this shutting down and I am working on something similar'.

I have started taking a bit of a different approach to the problem though, in that I want to create a drop box per work area (in my day job, I tend to have many mini-projects to manage at once, each lasting only a month or two) to help me keep track of things without excel.

I guess Basecamp or Highrise may get me what I wanted too, but I wanted a small project that is achievable in a reasonable time working 10 hours a week on it, so I am giving it a go!