Manage your to-do list from ChatGPT

Most of us already tell ChatGPT what we have to do. We paste in a meeting summary and ask what the action items are. We think out loud about the weekend and a list falls out. The trouble is what happens next: the list lives in that one chat, and by Tuesday it is twenty messages up and half forgotten. ChatGPT is good at making the list and bad at keeping it.

The fix is to give ChatGPT a list it can write into. Connect it to AI TODO List and "add buy milk and call the dentist for tomorrow" puts two tasks on a board, one with a due date, where they stay until you tick them off. You can do the ticking from the chat too. This article is the whole setup, the prompts that work, and the parts ChatGPT still will not do for you.

Step 1: connect ChatGPT to the board

AI TODO List is not in ChatGPT's app directory yet, so you add it yourself. ChatGPT has a developer mode for exactly this: it lets you connect your own MCP server, which is the open standard assistants use to talk to outside tools. You need a ChatGPT plan that includes it (the free tier does not) and the web version of ChatGPT.

1. Open Settings, then Apps & Connectors, then Advanced settings, and switch on Developer mode.
2. Back in Apps & Connectors, click Create. Name it AI TODO List and paste this address into the MCP server URL field. Choose OAuth for authentication and click Create.

https://api.minosin.com/api/aitodolist/v1/mcp

ChatGPT opens a sign-in page. Enter your email, type the code we send you and click Allow. That is the same passwordless login the web app uses; no password or API key is copied anywhere. Using the board from ChatGPT needs an AI TODO List subscription, and the yearly plan starts with a free month, so you can set this up and use it for a month before anything is charged.

Step 2: say what you have to do

Start a new chat and either pick AI TODO List from the + menu or mention it by name the first time. After that you talk normally. The things that work best are the things you would say to a person:

• "Add buy milk and call the dentist for tomorrow."
• "Here are the notes from the call. Add a task for each thing I promised."
• "Add renew my passport, tagged admin, due the 15th."

ChatGPT turns each one into a task with a title, and a tag or a due date if you gave one. New tasks land in To do. If you want them somewhere else, say the list by name, or drag them on the board later. The nice part is the second example: paste a wall of notes and ask for tasks, and ChatGPT does the extracting, which is the part it was always good at.

Step 3: ask what is due

The connection goes both ways, so ChatGPT can read the board before it answers. "What is due today?" comes back from the real list, not from what it remembers of an earlier chat. "What is overdue?" lists the tasks whose date has passed. "Show me everything tagged work" filters by tag.

My favourite is "plan my day". It reads what is overdue, what is due today and what is in To do, proposes the three things to do first and tells you why, then waits. It does not move anything until you say yes. If you disagree, say so and it adjusts.

Step 4: tick things off from the chat

"I finished the slides" completes that task. If you have a list called Done, it moves there too, ticked and struck through. "I started on the tax return" moves a task to In progress. "Never mind the dentist, I cancelled" archives it. Past-tense sentences about things that are already on the board complete the existing task instead of creating a new one; that is a rule the connection follows, so you do not end up with duplicates.

Once a week, say "tidy my board". ChatGPT looks for tasks that have sat for a month, completed tasks that are still on the board, and near duplicates, and proposes what to archive or complete. Again it waits for your yes.

What ChatGPT will not do for you

A few things are still yours. ChatGPT only reaches for the connection when the request calls for it, so a new chat sometimes needs a nudge: name AI TODO List or pick it from the + menu. It cannot delete a task, by design; it can archive one, and you can restore it from the archive in the app. And it does not watch the board on its own. Nothing happens between chats unless you open the app or ask.

A day with it

In the morning, open ChatGPT and say "plan my day". Accept the top three or trade one out. During the day, when something comes up mid-conversation, say "add that to my list" and keep going. When you finish something, say so. In the evening, glance at the board in the browser; it is the same list, so there is nothing to sync. On Friday, "tidy my board".

That is the whole routine. The board stays small because In progress is only what you are actually doing, Done stays visible until you archive it, and ChatGPT does the typing.

If you want the list without the copy and paste

You can run a to-do list in ChatGPT for a long time with a pinned chat and some discipline. I built AI TODO List for the parts that keep slipping: the list lives on a board with To do, In progress and Done, ChatGPT reads and writes it through a connection you set up once, and every task keeps a history of what changed. The same board is open in the browser, so what you say in a chat is what you see on the screen.

You sign in with an email code, no password. The yearly plan starts with a free month and you can cancel before it bills. Setup takes about two minutes: start on the homepage, then follow the connection guide for ChatGPT.

More

The step-by-step setup with troubleshooting is on the ChatGPT connection guide. The same board works from Claude, and how it works explains the lists, the tasks and what completing versus archiving means.

https://api.minosin.com/api/aitodolist/v1/mcp