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Task Overview

Tasks are the individual units of work your team delivers — generated from your plan, owned by a person, and tracked through to done.

Overview

In Hamster Studio, tasks do not exist in isolation. They are the output of a plan, which is itself generated from a brief. This means every task carries context: it knows which brief it belongs to, what the broader goal is, and where it sits in the delivery sequence. Tasks represent discrete, actionable pieces of work — not vague to-do items, but scoped deliverables that a team member can pick up and drive to completion.

Each task has a title, a description (which may include rich formatted content), a status, a priority level, an optional assignee, and an optional due date. Tasks can also have subtasks nested beneath them when the work warrants further breakdown.

Tasks list view showing tasks organized within a plan

How It Works

  1. Start with a brief — You create a brief to capture the goal of a piece of work. The brief contains objectives, context, and acceptance criteria. See Creating Briefs for details.

  2. Generate a plan — From the brief, Hamster Studio generates a plan: an ordered sequence of tasks that describes how to deliver the work. Each step in the plan becomes a task. See Generating Plans for how this works.

  3. Work the tasks — Once tasks exist, they appear in the Plan tab of the brief. You can view them as a flat list or grouped by status. Each task can be opened to read its description, update its status, assign it to someone, and manage its subtasks.

  4. Track progress — As tasks move from Todo to In Progress to Done, the brief shows an aggregate view of completion. When every task is marked Done, the brief is effectively delivered.

Key Capabilities

  • Three statuses: Tasks move through Todo, In Progress, and Done. You can change status from the task list or from inside the task detail view.

  • Four priority levels: Low, Medium, High, and Urgent. Priority is set by the plan generator and can be updated manually.

  • Subtask nesting: Every task can contain subtasks. Subtasks follow the same status model and can themselves be further broken down. The task row in the list shows a radial progress indicator when subtasks exist.

  • Complexity score: The plan generator may attach a complexity rating (Low, Medium, High) to a task. This is displayed on the task detail page and on task row cards for quick scanning.

  • Dependencies: Tasks can have dependencies on other tasks. The count of dependency tasks is shown on the task detail page.

  • Display ID: Each task is given a short display identifier (e.g., T-001) that appears in breadcrumbs and task rows for quick reference.

  • Real-time updates: Task state — status, assignee, priority — updates live across all team members viewing the same brief without needing to reload the page.

The Task Lifecycle

A typical task moves through the following states:

  1. Todo — Task exists but no one has started it yet. This is the default state when a task is first generated.
  2. In Progress — Someone has picked up the task or it has been assigned to an agent that has begun working on it.
  3. Done — The work is complete. The task is counted toward the brief's overall completion.

You can move tasks between states at any point. There is no enforced order — a task can go back from Done to In Progress if rework is needed.

Tips

  • If a task feels too large, use the AI expansion feature from inside the task detail view to automatically generate subtasks. You can also add subtasks manually.
  • The Plan tab shows a "next best task" indicator — a small dot on the task most worth picking up next. This is determined by status: the first In Progress task takes priority, followed by the first Todo task.
  • Tasks generated from the plan inherit context from the brief. The task description will often contain enough information to act without referring back to the original brief.

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