Quick Add

Quick Add is the fastest way to get a task into Pensum. Cmd+Shift+A from anywhere in Obsidian opens a modal, you type one line, press Enter, and it’s in your Inbox.

The point: capture should never feel like a chore. If you have to think about where the task goes, what to call it, or which fields to fill, you’ll stop capturing and start losing things. Quick Add removes the friction.

The basic flow

Cmd+Shift+A opens the modal
Type a task description in plain English
Pensum parses it as you type and shows a preview (priority, date, project, tags) below the input
Press Enter to save, Esc to cancel

The task lands in your first configured inbox file (Tasks/Inbox.md by default — change it under Settings → General → Vault and paths).

Natural language parsing

Pensum’s local parser recognises these patterns anywhere in your input. Mix and match freely.

Priorities

You type	Result
`p1` or `!!!`	Highest priority (`🔺` in markdown)
`p2` or `!!`	High (`⏫`)
`p3` or `!`	Medium (`🔼`)
`p4`	Low (`🔽`)

Dates

You type	Result
`today`	Today’s date
`tomorrow`	Tomorrow’s date
`next Monday`, `next Friday`, …	The next occurrence of that weekday
`Monday`, `Tuesday`, …	This week’s occurrence if it hasn’t passed, otherwise next week
`2026-05-20`	Explicit ISO date
`+3d`, `+1w`, `+2m`	Relative offsets from today

Dates write to the standard Tasks-format 📅 YYYY-MM-DD field.

You type	Result
`#work`	Tag `work`
`#project/alpha`	Nested tag `project/alpha`
`#1-1`, `#smtp`	Anything Obsidian accepts as a tag

Projects

You type	Result
`@alpha`	Looks for a project named `alpha` in your vault; if it matches, assigns the task to that project via `#project/alpha`

If the @name doesn’t match an existing project, the literal @name stays in the description. Projects are auto-discovered from any file with type: project in its frontmatter.

Example

You type:

Send pricing deck to Jamie p1 tomorrow @acme #revenue

Pensum produces:

- [ ] Send pricing deck to Jamie 🔺 📅 2026-05-17 #project/acme #revenue

The task lands at the bottom of Tasks/Inbox.md. The preview in the modal shows you exactly what’s going to be written before you press Enter.

Smart Capture (Pro)

Toggle the AI checkbox in the modal header to switch to AI-enhanced parsing. The AI:

Matches projects from your vault — @a becomes @acme if “acme” is the closest project name
Resolves ambiguous dates — next Fri works, eod works, before the launch works if context helps
Suggests tags from recent usage — pulls from tags you’ve used in the last 100 tasks
Cleans up the description — extracts metadata and returns a tight, action-oriented summary
Uses your current file as context — if you’re in a project file, projects in that file’s neighbourhood are weighted higher

Results show with an AI badge in the preview. If the AI call fails for any reason (network error, rate limit, bad key, no AI configured), Quick Add silently falls back to local parsing so capture never breaks.

Smart Capture is a parser, not an author — the resulting task is marked user-authored in provenance. See Smart Capture for the model details.

Where the task goes

Always your first configured inbox file. Change which file with Settings → General → Inbox files. If you list multiple inbox files (comma-separated), Quick Add uses the first one. The others are still recognised as inbox files by views like Inbox and Today.

If the inbox file doesn’t exist, Pensum creates it.

When to use Quick Add vs. capturing inline

Use Quick Add when…	Use inline `- [ ]` when…
You’re not in the file the task belongs to	You’re already in the file (project, meeting, daily note)
The task is unassigned and needs triage later	The task belongs with the surrounding context
You need to capture fast and move on	You’re going to elaborate / add subtasks immediately

Either way the task ends up in the same task graph — there’s no “Quick Add tasks” category. The Inbox view just happens to filter to inbox-file contents because those are the tasks that need triage.

Hotkey

Pensum doesn’t ship a pre-bound hotkey (Obsidian asks plugins not to claim shortcuts at install time). The Pensum team uses Cmd+Shift+A (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows / Linux) for Quick Add — bind it under Settings → Hotkeys → search “Pensum: Quick Add task”. See the Hotkey reference for the full suggested map.