Terminal tool for visually comparing time zones and finding meeting slots
Terminal tool for visually comparing time zones and finding meeting slots
A terminal tool for visually comparing time zones — built for distributed teams.
This tool was born out of a practical need: managing a distributed team of engineers spread across distinct time zones around the globe. Finding good mutual time slots for meetings and synchronous work shouldn't require mental arithmetic or a web app — it should be a quick terminal command away.
A great way to get a feel for `ztl` is to launch the TUI (using the plain `ztl` command) and add some timezones (with the `a` control). Persisting the timezones is as simple as hitting the `s` key. At a later stage, if you want to check in on the time in other timezones of interest, simply punch in `ztl`, and your saved timezones will be displayed.
`ztl` is designed to be incredibly intuitive, but also lightweight. It aims to provide a delightful interactive TUI UX, without the need for ongoing interactivity beyond setup – instead becoming a customized point of reference for timezone-related information.
m to toggle between the timeline and the map, or launch straight into it with ztl --map. Every configured zone is plotted on a Unicode-braille Web-Mercator projection that reflows with the terminal, coloured by the same core / shoulder / off availability as the timeline and driven by the shared cursor instant. A shaded day/night hemisphere with a solar terminator tracks the cursor so you can see at a glance who is awake, the focused zone is highlighted (◉) with its local time on a status line, and UTC / fixed-offset zones sit on the equator at their offset longitude with a distinct hollow marker. Coastlines are bundled from Natural Earth and per-zone coordinates from the IANA time zone database, so the build stays offline and dependency-free.default_view option in the config's [general] section (alongside the --map flag) to choose whether the TUI opens on the timeline or the map; saving in the TUI (s) persists whichever view you are in.
By Alvin
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