I like the new @today highlighting feature, but "@done" should "do something" (remove?) @today ... (search conflict)

Basically, leaving @today with @done yields all @done @today alongside not done things which would clutter your focused “@today” list …

While you’re at it could you embed a similar @focus (for this moment/hour) … maybe redder-orange and @!!! for urgent stuff? BTW, @“symbols” don’t show up as options in the search for tags box … is that by design?

I read your issue again and realized that your problem was related to the search functions. You can get that done with the query commands. http://guide.taskpaper.com/creating_queries.html