tng

tng is a fast, keyboard-driven terminal client for Linear. It shows your assigned issues, the active cycle, and your team's backlog in a single grouped, filterable list, and lets you triage — change status, assignee, or priority, comment, edit descriptions, and create new issues — without leaving the terminal.

(Demo-mode data — see below.)

Features

• Three views — My Issues, the active cycle, and the whole team backlog, grouped by workflow state with unicode glyphs (■ in progress, ☐ todo, ⚠ urgent, ...)
• Issue detail in three screens — description with markdown rendering, full metadata, and the comment thread
• Triage without leaving the list — optimistic status/assignee/priority changes with fuzzy pickers; instant local apply, revert on API failure
• Your editor for writing — comments, descriptions, and new issues open $EDITOR
• Branch-name yank — Y copies Linear's suggested git branch name

Install

From crates.io:

cargo install tng

Or from source:

cargo install --git https://github.com/tdi/tng

Requires a Rust toolchain.

Setup

tng needs a Linear personal API key. Create one at https://linear.app/settings/account/security, then provide it either way:

• Environment variable (takes priority):

  export LINEAR_API_KEY=lin_api_...

• Config file — add api_key to config.toml (see below).

Launching without a key found in either place prints setup instructions and exits cleanly.

Demo mode

Want to kick the tires or grab a screenshot without a real account? Run:

tng --demo        # or: TNG_DEMO=1 tng

Demo mode drives the full UI against built-in fake data for a fictional "ACME" team — no API key, no network calls, nothing from your real Linear workspace.

Keys

Key	Action
j/k, g/G	move down/up, jump to top/bottom
Enter	open issue detail
Tab / 1 2 3	switch view; inside detail: Main / Metadata / Comments sub-screens
Shift-Tab	previous view; inside detail: previous sub-screen
s	change status (picking Duplicate opens a chooser for the canonical issue)
a	change assignee
p	change priority
T	switch team (persisted to config)
c	add a comment (opens $EDITOR)
C	create an issue (title, then editor for description, then pickers — Esc skips a picker field)
e	edit description (opens $EDITOR)
/	filter the current list (Enter keeps the filter, Esc clears it)
Ctrl-K	search all issues (workspace-wide)
o	open the selected issue in your browser
y	yank the issue identifier to the clipboard
Y	yank the issue's git branch name to the clipboard
r	refresh the current view
?	toggle this help overlay
Esc	back: close the detail view or help overlay (never quits)
q	back when in the detail view, otherwise quit

Config file

tng reads config.toml from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tng/config.toml, falling back to ~/.config/tng/config.toml when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset:

api_key = "lin_api_..."   # optional; LINEAR_API_KEY env var takes priority
default_team = "BIT"      # optional; team key, set automatically when you press T
editor = "nvim"           # optional; falls back to $EDITOR, then "vi"

The file is written automatically when you switch teams with T, so the choice survives a restart. All fields are optional and the file does not need to exist on first run.

Logs

tng writes structured logs to $XDG_STATE_HOME/tng/tng.log, falling back to ~/.local/state/tng/tng.log when XDG_STATE_HOME is unset. Set RUST_LOG to control verbosity (defaults to info).

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license at your option.