taskmaster

A reference for using Taskmaster, a project task-management system, through its connected tools or command-line program. It documents setup, task operations, and which actions may take longer because they use AI processing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to initialize projects, parse requirements, analyze project complexity, create or expand tasks, update tasks and subtasks, and find the matching tool or command.
Why use it?
It reduces errors when initializing a project or managing tasks with unfamiliar commands. It also explains when a task operation may take up to a minute.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/jimbul/youdotcom_mcp/taskmaster
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jimbul/youdotcom_MCP

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 6,795 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 6,795 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 88% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.06795 $0.06795
Opus 5 $0.03397 $0.03397
Sonnet 5 $0.01359 $0.01359
Haiku 4.5 $0.00679 $0.00679

Measured yesterday against content hash 0b19b3a0d3b5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

taskmaster scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to taskmaster — 410 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.cursor/rules/taskmaster.mdc · 354 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 354 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Taskmaster Tool & Command Reference

This document provides a detailed reference for interacting with Taskmaster, covering both the recommended MCP tools (for integrations like Cursor) and the corresponding task-master CLI commands (for direct user interaction or fallback).

Note: For interacting with Taskmaster programmatically or via integrated tools, using the MCP tools is strongly recommended due to better performance, structured data, and error handling. The CLI commands serve as a user-friendly alternative and fallback. See mcp.mdc for MCP implementation details and commands.mdc for CLI implementation guidelines.

Important: Several MCP tools involve AI processing and are long-running operations that may take up to a minute to complete. When using these tools, always inform users that the operation is in progress and to wait patiently for results. The AI-powered tools include: parse_prd, analyze_project_complexity, update_subtask, update_task, update, expand_all, expand_task, and add_task.


Initialization & Setup

1. Initialize Project (init)

  • MCP Tool: initialize_project
  • CLI Command: task-master init [options]
  • Description: Set up the basic Taskmaster file structure and configuration in the current directory for a new project.
  • Key CLI Options:
    • --name <name>: Set the name for your project in Taskmaster's configuration.
    • --description <text>: Provide a brief description for your project.
    • --version <version>: Set the initial version for your project (e.g., '0.1.0').
    • -y, --yes: Initialize Taskmaster quickly using default settings without interactive prompts.
  • Usage: Run this once at the beginning of a new project.
  • MCP Variant Description: Set up the basic Taskmaster file structure and configuration in the current directory for a new project by running the 'task-master init' command.
  • Key MCP Parameters/Options:
    • projectName: Set the name for your project. (CLI: --name <name>)
    • projectDescription: Provide a brief description for your project. (CLI: --description <text>)
    • projectVersion: Set the initial version for your project (e.g., '0.1.0'). (CLI: --version <version>)
    • authorName: Author name. (CLI: --author <author>)
    • skipInstall: Skip installing dependencies (default: false). (CLI: --skip-install)
    • addAliases: Add shell aliases (tm, taskmaster) (default: false). (CLI: --aliases)
    • yes: Skip prompts and use defaults/provided arguments (default: false). (CLI: -y, --yes)
  • Usage: Run this once at the beginning of a new project, typically via an integrated tool like Cursor. Operates on the current working directory of the MCP server.
  • Important: Once complete, you MUST parse a prd in order to generate tasks. There will be no tasks files until then. The next step after initializing should be to create a PRD using the example PRD in scripts/example_prd.txt.

Read the full file on GitHub · 354 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 354 lines · 6,795 tokens per session scan A 0b19b3a0d3b5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

taskmaster is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository jimbul/youdotcom_MCP (2 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It adds 6,795 tokens to every session, about $0.0340 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to taskmaster, differing in 410 lines, and is treated as a copy.