Manage tasks on a project board

A task keeps a piece of work together: its purpose, owner, status, files, and the conversation about the result. Use the project board for work a person will do as well as work you delegate to an agent. You need permission to edit the project to change its tasks, and the project must be active: an archived project is read-only until an administrator restores it.

Create a task with a clear result

1. Open the project’s Tasks tab and click Create task.
2. Write a Title that names the result, such as “Review the launch brief”.
3. Use Description to explain what is needed and how the result will be checked. Add supporting files under Attachments when the work depends on them.
4. Choose Status, Priority, and an Assignee as needed. New tasks default to To do; use Backlog for a proposal the team has not committed to.
5. Click Create task. Open the new card to continue adding details.

A title can have up to 200 characters and a description up to 20,000; most emoji count as 2. A longer description, pasted in or left on a task by an earlier import, is not cut: the field names the limit and counts the length, and Create task or Save stays unavailable until you shorten it.

Tale gives the task an identifier built from the project key, such as WEB-1. Use that identifier when referring to the work so similarly named tasks remain distinguishable.

Choose an owner and a reviewer

Assignee identifies who does the work: a person, a project agent, or an automation available to the project. Reviewer identifies the person to notify when an agent’s result needs review. Only members who can edit the project can be reviewers.

Assigning an agent and starting its run are separate choices. After assigning it, click Start agent, or move the task to In progress. Read Task automation before starting work that can use connected services or produce files.

The reviewer receives the review request, but the designation does not reserve the decision exclusively to that person. Another member with project edit access can also accept the result.

Use statuses to communicate progress

Change Status in the task details, or drag a card to another column on Board. The status picker is the keyboard-accessible alternative to dragging.

For an agent-owned task, changing status can start or cancel execution. Read the action hint before moving it. An agent reports back at In review; it cannot mark its own work Done.

Keep decisions with the work

Open the task to add a description, attachments, dates, labels, subtasks, or comments. Use comments for questions, decisions, and feedback that future reviewers need to understand.

Typing @ in a comment opens the mention picker. A mention of an assigned agent is an instruction: it can steer a running agent or start another run when the agent is idle. A plain comment records the discussion without requesting that agent action.

Mentions in the task description work the same way when you save the task: the people you name are notified, and a named agent is steered or starts a run as described above. A run it starts moves the task to In progress, whichever column you created it in. When you edit the description later, only the mentions you add take effect. Rewording the text around an existing mention notifies no one again. The agent reads the description as it is when its run starts, so an edit you make while the run is still waiting is the version it works from.

Use Subtasks to split work that has separately checkable results. A subtask names its parent at the top of its details (Part of …); click it to go back up. A parent task cannot close while its subtasks remain open. Dependencies shows which tasks block this task and which it blocks; circular dependencies are refused.

Repeat a task

Give a task a repeat when the same work comes back on a schedule, such as a weekly status report. Each time the task closes, the next one appears in To do, due on the next day the repeat names.

Click Repeat below Due date, in the task's details or in Create task, and choose how the task repeats. A choice is saved as soon as you click it:

• Never
• Daily
• Every weekday, Monday to Friday
• Weekly on …, Monthly on day …, or Yearly on …, which take their day from the due date; a task without one uses its start date if that is still ahead, or else today

Next due dates shows when the next three tasks will be due. A task without a due date gets one when you choose a repeat: the first matching day from today, or from its start date when that is later. A monthly repeat on the 31st falls on the last day of shorter months. If you clear the due date of a task that already repeats, the repeat stays: the next task then comes when this one closes, due on the first matching day after that, and Repeat says so when you open it. Any change to the repeat gives the task a due date again.

If the dates exceed the supported calendar range, the preview explains this. Choose an earlier start or due date before setting the repeat.

Set a custom repeat

For any other schedule, choose Custom in the same list. Pick Day, Week, Month, or Year, set how often the task comes back, and choose the weekdays, the day of the month, or the date, such as every 2 weeks on Tuesday and Thursday. Next due dates follows each change. Click Save to keep the repeat. Cancel, Escape, or a click outside the list discards your changes; the back arrow returns to the list and keeps them.

Create the next task on the due date

Normally, the next task appears when you move this one to Done or Cancelled. When the work has to come back on time even if the last round isn't finished, open Repeat on a repeating task, select Create the next task on the due date below the dates, and click Save. The next task then appears at the start of the due date, midnight in the time zone of whoever set up the repeat, even while this task is still open. If the task is already due, the next one appears within a few minutes, and closing the task before its due date creates the next one at once. System appears as its creator in the task's activity. Repeat shows a calendar icon, and the tooltip of the repeat icon on Board and List ends in next task on the due date.

Open tasks no longer hold such a series back, so they can pile up when nobody closes them. A series never has more than 10 open tasks: the next one waits until someone closes one of them. Changing the repeat, or choosing Never and then a repeat again, still counts the tasks that remain open in the series.

What the next task brings back

The next task has its own identifier and starts in To do. It keeps the title, description, priority, labels, attachments, assignee, reviewer, the people watching the task, and the repeat. Its subtasks come back with it, each in To do with its dates moved by the same step, along with the dependencies between them. Comments, dependencies on other tasks, archived subtasks, and the files an agent produced stay with the earlier task. People carry over only while they still have access: the assignee while they can still be assigned, the reviewer while they can still edit the project, and watchers while they can still see it. Whoever stopped watching the task doesn't watch the next one either, even if they created it.

The next task is due on the first day the repeat names after the earlier task's due date, and a start date keeps the same number of days before it. That due date is never in the past: close a task late, and the next one is due today or on the next matching day, so missed dates don't pile up as overdue tasks.

Under Repeat, the earlier task links to the next one, such as Next task: WEB-13; reopening the earlier task and closing it again creates no second one. On Board and List, a repeat icon marks the task that currently carries the series, and its tooltip names the repeat.

Stop a series

When you close a repeating task, the message Next task created tells you when the next one is due and offers Stop repeating. The same button stays under Repeat on the task that created the next one, beside Next task, while the next task still repeats. If nobody has touched the next task yet (it is still in To do, unchanged, with no comments or agent runs), it is removed together with its subtasks. Otherwise it stays and no longer repeats. Either way, the series ends: on the task you stopped it from, Repeat reads Never, and its tooltip says This series has stopped. If you used the button under Repeat, the focus then moves to Repeat. You can also set Repeat to Never on the latest task of the series.

Deleting the latest task of a series ends the series. The task before it doesn't create another one, even if you reopen it and close it again: it shows no repeat icon, and its Repeat stays locked, with the tooltip Its next task was deleted. This task cannot repeat again. Deleting an earlier task leaves the series going on from the latest one.

When the repeat can't be changed

Point at Repeat, or move the keyboard focus to it, to read why it is locked:

• A task that already created its next task has handed the series on and doesn't repeat again, even if you reopen it. While the series goes on, change the repeat on the next task, which the Next task link opens. Once the series has stopped or its next task was deleted, Repeat says so.
• Any other task in Done or Cancelled keeps the repeat it closed with. Reopen it to change the repeat.
• A subtask has no repeat of its own. While its parent repeats, Repeat reads With WEB-3, for example, and each next task of the parent brings a fresh copy of the subtask. An archived subtask has no Repeat: it doesn't come back. Work that follows its own schedule needs a task of its own.
• A task an automation owns doesn't repeat, and assigning a repeating task to an automation ends its series.
• In Create task, Repeat reads Never while Status is Done or Cancelled, or while an automation is the assignee.

Review the result before closing

For a human-owned task, compare the work with the description’s completion check. For agent work, read the report in the task’s comments and inspect any produced files. A finished run means the agent has stopped working, not that a person has accepted the result.

Move the task to Done when the result meets the requirement. If an agent needs to revise it, add specific feedback and mention that agent. Task automation explains retries, rework, and cancellation.

Open your tasks from Home

Home lists the open tasks assigned to you and those waiting for your review, from every project you can read; Tasks above the list shows only them. A task you open there appears as a page of its own beside the Home panel, not in the board's dialog:

• The brief comes first as a card: the description, attachments, and subtasks.
• The discussion follows like a conversation, oldest first under day labels. It combines the comments with the task's history, such as status changes, assignments, and agent runs.
• The comment box sits at the bottom. Send with ⌘+Enter or Ctrl+Enter, or with the round send button; Enter alone starts a new line. Type @ to mention an agent or a person, with the same effect as in the board's dialog. Text you have not sent stays in the box for that task, here and in the board's dialog, and the task's row in Home shows Draft while you work elsewhere.
• Details beside the discussion holds the status, priority, assignee, reviewer, dates, repeat, labels, and dependencies, together with Watch and Archive. Organization owners and admins also find Delete there: it removes the task with its subtasks, their comments, and their files for good, and stops their running agent runs. Hide details at the end of the header folds it away, and Show details brings it back. In a window too narrow to keep both side by side, Show details opens it as a sheet over the discussion instead — from the side, or from the bottom on a phone.

Board in the header opens the project's task board. A task you open from the board still appears in its dialog; both views edit the same task. Copy link, the link icon beside Board, copies a link to this task page. To copy the task's identifier, such as WEB-2, click it in the line under the title; a message confirms each copy.

Find work that needs attention

Use Filter to narrow the board, or switch to List to scan rows. Keep proposals in Backlog until they are ready to start; use labels for distinctions that do not need another status.

In Board and List, press Tab until the task title is focused, then press Enter to open the task.

If you can edit the task, press Space on its title to pick it up, move it with the arrow keys, and press Space again to drop it. Escape cancels the move and leaves the task where it was. A screen reader names the task when you pick it up and announces its status and position as you move it.

If a change is refused, check the task’s current state before trying again: a live agent run blocks reassignment, open subtasks block closure, and project access determines whether you can edit at all.