8.1 Not from Scratch

Two entries into one store - that is useful. Two entries into two stores with the same name

• those are two separate tools that have no idea the other exists. The difference is not noticed immediately: everything looks normal right up until one entry searches for something put in through the other.

What You Need

The command line writes tasks to tasks.json. The server could read from the same file - then both entries would lead to one store. Right now the server always starts with an empty store. A few lines in crates/api/src/main.rs change that: load the config, load the tasks from disk, hand them to TaskStore.

The Build

The full crates/api/src/main.rs:

// crates/api/src/main.rs - CHANGED
mod routes;

use axum::{Router, routing::get};
use routes::SharedStore;
use std::path::Path;
use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
use tq_core::config::Config;
use tq_core::persistence;
use tq_core::store::TaskStore;

async fn health() -> String {
    "tq ok".to_string()
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let config = Config::load(Path::new("config.toml"), None).unwrap_or_default();
    let data_path = config.data_dir.join("tasks.json");
    let tasks = persistence::load(&data_path).unwrap_or_default(); // empty vec if file missing
    let store: SharedStore = Arc::new(Mutex::new(TaskStore::new(tasks)));
    let app = Router::new()
        .route("/", get(health))
        .merge(routes::router(store));
    let listener = tokio::net::TcpListener::bind("0.0.0.0:3000").await.unwrap();
    axum::serve(listener, app).await.unwrap();
}

The Result

Add tasks through the command line, then start the server. If a tasks.json remains from earlier chapters, clear it first:

$ rm -f tasks.json
$ cargo run -p tq-cli -- add "buy milk"
$ cargo run -p tq-cli -- add "send report"
$ make serve

In another terminal:

$ curl -s localhost:3000/tasks
[{"id":1,"title":"buy milk","status":"Todo","created_at":"2026-06-20T10:00:00Z"},
 {"id":2,"title":"send report","status":"Todo","created_at":"2026-06-20T10:05:00Z"}]

Both entries look into the same ledger. Tasks added through the CLI are visible through the API.

Tasks added through the API are not yet saved - all changes made through the server live only in process memory. The next step will fix that.

The complete tq code for this chapter is in 8-ready/01-not-from-scratch/.