task-management

Task Management

Prioritize tasks, detect overdue items, and help with daily planning.

When to Use

• A new task is created (triggered automatically via hook)
• Daily review schedule fires (weekday mornings)
• User asks to prioritize, plan their day, or review tasks

Process

1. Assess new tasks: When a task is created without a priority, evaluate it:

   • Check the due_date — tasks due within 24 hours get high or critical
   • Check the effort — epic tasks with near due dates get critical
   • Check the project — inherit urgency from project due dates
   • Default to medium if no signals are present

2. Daily review: Scan all active tasks and surface:

   • Overdue tasks (past due_date) — flag these first
   • Tasks due today — sorted by priority
   • Tasks due this week with no priority set
   • Stale tasks (no update in 7+ days)

3. Project progress: When reviewing tasks, summarize project health:

   • Count active vs. completed tasks per project
   • Flag projects with many overdue tasks
   • Note projects approaching their due_date with incomplete tasks

4. Suggest next actions: After review, recommend:

   • Which tasks to tackle first (highest priority, smallest effort)
   • Tasks that could be broken down (large/epic effort, no subtasks)
   • Tasks that may need re-prioritization

Priority Assignment Rubric

Signal	Suggested Priority
Due today, any effort	critical
Due within 3 days, medium+ effort	high
Due within 7 days	medium
No due date, part of active project	medium
No due date, standalone	low
Blocked or waiting on external input	low (add "blocked" tag)

Rules

• Never change a user-set priority without asking first
• Always explain why you assigned or changed a priority
• When marking a task complete, set completed_at to the current timestamp
• Archive completed tasks after 30 days to keep the active list clean
• Link tasks to their project via a belongs_to relationship
• Link tasks to labels via a labeled relationship