Creating and managing time anchors

Time anchors are a core concept in UTMS, allowing you to manage and calculate time references efficiently. This tutorial demonstrates how to create, update, and delete anchors.

Prerequisites

• UTMS installed and configured.

Steps

1. List existing anchors: Use the anchor list or the shortcut anchor to show current anchors. The anchors in the default group will show up on your queries BY DEFAULT if you don’t specify which anchors to display. If using the UTMS prompt, prefix the commands with the dot char.

   $ utms anchor
   Label: NT
   Name: Now Time (2025-01-08 20:18:11)
   Value: 1736363892.270
   Groups: default, dynamic, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - Y
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: DT
   Name: Day Time (2025-01-08 00:00:00)
   Value: 1736290800.000
   Groups: dynamic, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - dd, cd, s, ms
     - h, m, s, ms
     - KS, s, ms
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: MT
   Name: Month Time (2025-01-01 00:00:00)
   Value: 1735686000.000
   Groups: dynamic, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - d, dd, cd, s, ms
     - w, d, dd, cd, s, ms
     - MS, KS, s, ms
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: YT
   Name: Year Time (2025-01-01 00:00:00)
   Value: 1735686000.000
   Groups: dynamic, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - d, dd, cd, s, ms
     - w, d, dd, cd, s, ms
     - M, d, dd, cd, s, ms
     - MS, KS, s, ms
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: UT
   Name: Unix Time (1970-01-01)
   Value: 0.000
   Groups: default, standard, fixed, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - s
     - Y
     - PS, TS, GS, MS, KS, s, ms
     - Ga, Ma, Mn, Y, d, h, m, s
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: mT
   Name: Millennium Time (2000-01-01)
   Value: 946684800.000
   Groups: default, standard, fixed, modern
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - Y
     - Ga, Ma, Mn, Y, d, h, m, s
     - PS, TS, GS, MS, KS, s
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: CE
   Name: CE Time (1 CE)
   Value: -62167153726.000
   Groups: default, standard, fixed, historical
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - Y
     - Ga, Ma, Mn, Y, d, h, m, s
     - PS, TS, GS, MS, KS, s
   --------------------------------------------------
   Label: BB
   Name: Big Bang Time (13.8e9 years ago)
   Value: -435485579904000000.000
   Groups: astronomical, fixed
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - Y
     - Ga, Ma
     - TS, GS, MS, KS, s, ms
   

2. Create a new anchor You can create a new anchor by giving it a name and a value, which can be as well resolved by the AI into a date. Everything else besides the name and the value are optional and have default values.

   $ utms anchor create Biden -n "Joe Biden" -v "when was Joe Biden elected president"
   AI: 2020-11-03T00:00:00+00:00
   
   Anchors successfully saved to '/home/daniel/.config/utms/anchors.json'
   

   Verify creation:

   $ utms anchor get Biden
   Label: Biden
   Name: Joe Biden
   Value: 1604361600.000
   Groups:
   Precision: 1.000e-6
   Breakdowns:
     - Y
     - Ga, Ma, Mn, Y, d, h, m, s
     - PS, TS, GS, MS, KS, s
   --------------------------------------------------
   

2. Update an Existing Anchor: You can use anchor set command to change anchor’s values.

   usage: utms anchor set [-h] [-n NAME] [-v VALUE] [-g GROUPS] [-p PRECISION] [-b BREAKDOWNS] label
   
   Set an anchor parameters by label
   
   Set the parameters of an anchor by its label
   
   positional arguments:
     label                 Label of the anchor
   
   options:
     -h, --help            show this help message and exit
     -n NAME, --name NAME  Full name of the anchor
     -v VALUE, --value VALUE
                           Set the value of the anchor. If it cannot be casted to Decimal, resolve it
                           using dateparser/AI
     -g GROUPS, --groups GROUPS
                           Comma separated list of groups for the anchor i.e. `default,fixed`
     -p PRECISION, --precision PRECISION
                           Precision of the anchor
     -b BREAKDOWNS, --breakdowns BREAKDOWNS
                           List of lists of units to break down the time measurements relative to this
                           anchor i.e. Y;Ga,Ma;TS,GS,MS,KS,s,ms
   
   
   
   poetry run utms anchor update "start_of_sprint" "2025-01-16T10:00:00Z"