Repeating events

Calendite describes when something repeats with a short text rule. This page teaches the ideas and the forms you'll use most. For the exhaustive version, every form with worked examples, see the rule reference.

You never have to type a rule. The repeat sheet has ordinary pickers, and shows you the rule they compiled to; see Building repeats for that side of it. Reading the rule bar is the easiest way to learn the language.

Three things first

1. Commas combine. A schedule is a list of rules; the engine gathers the dates from each.

Mon, Thu          → every Monday and every Thursday

2. ! removes. A rule starting with ! subtracts its dates.

WD, !BankHolidays → every weekday except bank holidays

3. Order matters. Rules apply left to right, adding and removing as they go. Put inclusions first and exclusions last.

WD, !Fri       weekdays except Friday
!Fri, WD       removes Friday, then adds all weekdays back, so Friday returns

If a schedule has no positive rule at all, the event falls on its own start date.

The everyday forms

Day codes are Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun. Month codes are Jan…Dec. Both are capitalised exactly like that.

2Sat is the 2nd Saturday. 2_Sat, with an underscore, is the Saturday that falls in the 2nd week. They differ whenever a month starts mid-week. For February 2024, 2Wed is the 14th but 2_Wed is the 7th.

Which days count as the weekend comes from your Country setting.

Excluding things

Sat, !1Sat, !2Sat     every Saturday except the first two of the month
WD, !2025-12-25       every weekday, but not Christmas Day 2025
WD, !BankHolidays     every working weekday

BankHolidays there is a category: a named set of dates that lives outside the rule. It only produces dates once you've given Calendite a source for it; see Data sources and feeds.

Referring to your own events

This is the part with no equivalent in other calendars. A rule can name a tag, an event series or a feed and use its dates:

Tag(Work) and Event(Work) are different sets: one is every event sharing a tag, the other is one specific series. The rule names which you mean.

The payoff is being able to pick out of them:

-1__Tag(Work)__OF__MONTH    the last working day of the month

Here "working day" means whatever your Work events say. Change your shifts and the rule follows.

Careful: these need a data source. On their own they resolve to nothing, and an event whose only rule is Tag(Work) with no Work events will never fire.

Picking the Nth thing out of a period

{which}__{what}__OF__{period}

{period} is DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR, or a specific month (Jan…Dec). {what} is WD, WE, a day code, a group like (Mon.Wed.Fri), or a tag/event/feed reference. {which} is 1, -1 (counting from the end), a range (1..5), a set (1.3.5), or ALL (specific months only).

The rest, briefly

Shift to a working day with ~. Useful when a fixed date lands on a weekend:

WD~<25Dec     the weekday just before Christmas
WD~=25Dec     the nearest weekday to Christmas
!WD~>25Dec    the first non-weekday after Christmas

Note the type comes first: WD~<25Dec, not 25Dec~<WD.

Limit to months with LIMIT(...), written last:

Mon, Thu, LIMIT(Jan.Mar)      Mondays and Thursdays, January and March only

Scope a limit or exclusion to a group with braces:

{Mon, LIMIT(Jan.Mar)}, {Fri, LIMIT(Jul)}

Mondays in Jan and March, plus Fridays in July. Each LIMIT stays inside its own group.

Require two things at once with __&__:

13Month__&__Fri     Friday the 13th

Moon phases with MOON(...):

MOON(FULL)          MOON(NEW)          MOON(50..75, WAXING)

Easter and the days that move with it with EASTER(...), worked out rather than fetched:

EASTER              EASTER(GoodFriday)          EASTER(Monday, Orthodox)

Typing it in English instead

The Manual Input mode accepts plain English and translates it on the device; nothing is sent anywhere:

• "every other Tuesday" → Tue2
• "weekdays except bank holidays" → WD, !BankHolidays
• "last Friday of the month" → -1__Fri__OF__MONTH

When your sentence names something of yours, such as "except karate days", Calendite matches it against your tags and events. If it's confident it resolves; if two things match it asks which you meant; if nothing matches it asks you to rephrase.

Natural-language input is Android only for now.

Ending a repeat

Separate from the rule itself, in the form's Ends control: never, on a date, or after a number of occurrences.

Cheat sheet

Next

• Inner and variant events: schedules built on other schedules
• Data sources and feeds: where BankHolidays comes from
• Rule reference: the complete syntax, every form and edge case