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Tasks

A task is a tracked piece of work. You or Ren can create one, including for follow-up work that comes up in a chat.

A task can span several chats. Use a task to track work, hand it between projects, or resume it later. Ren can use the task’s work and comment history when it resumes. Use a chat for a single request.

Every task belongs to a space. Everyone in the space can see it, and nobody else can. Put a task only you should see in your personal space.

In the API and CLI, a task is task.

Views

Open Tasks in the sidebar. Use the Display button to switch the layout:

  • List groups tasks by Project or by Status, ordered by creation date or priority.
  • Board shows tasks as cards, grouped by project.

Use Filter tasks to narrow by status, priority, project, assignee, or label. By default, the list shows tasks that are Todo or In progress. Search finds tasks by text.

Create a task

A task needs a title and a space. Everything else is optional:

  • Description: the details Ren and your teammates need.
  • Status: Todo, In progress, Done, or Dismissed.
  • Priority: Low, Medium, or High.
  • Assignee: a person in the space who owns the task.
  • Project: the project Ren uses to work on the task. Required before starting work.
  • Labels and due date: to group and schedule the task.
  1. Open Tasks and select New task, or press C. To add a task to a project directly, select the + next to the project’s group.
  2. Enter a title and an optional description.
  3. Choose the space, then set any properties: status, priority, assignee, project, labels, and due date.
  4. Select Create task. Turn on Create more to keep the dialog open for the next one.

Labels

Labels group tasks across projects, like billing or customer-request, and they’re shared across your organization. A task can have up to 16 labels, each up to 64 characters.

Ren uses two system labels: fix (ren-fix) for setup problems it can resolve, and improvement (ren-improve) for suggested improvements. You can filter by these labels but can’t edit them, and Ren reserves the ren- prefix.

  1. Open a task, or open Labels in the new task dialog.
  2. Search for a label and select it.
  3. To create one, type its name, pick a color, and select Create label.

When Ren starts work

Ren doesn’t start on a task when you create it, or when you change its project in the app. It starts when:

  • Someone selects Start on the task. See Start a task.
  • Someone hands the task to a project with the CLI or the API, or asks Ren to. See Hand a task to another project.
  • Someone messages Ren in a thread linked to the task, like the Slack thread or GitHub pull request the task came from. Ren continues the task in its project instead of starting a separate chat.

A task needs a project, and a status of Todo, In progress, or In review, before Ren can work on it.

Task details

Open a task to see everything about it:

  • Properties: status, priority, assignee, and due date.
  • Links: the Slack threads, Linear issues, GitHub pull requests, and other URLs the task points to. Ren adds links as it works, and you can add them with the API or CLI. The app shows links but doesn’t add them.
  • Labels and project: how the task is grouped and where Ren works on it.
  • Activity: every change to the task, who made it, comments, and the chats that worked on it. Open a chat from its card.

Only the author can edit or delete a comment.

Open the task, type in Leave a comment… at the bottom of the activity, and select Comment.

Start a task

Start runs the assigned project’s Ren on the task. Choose how:

  • Start new session opens a new chat for the task.
  • Continue last session resumes the assigned project’s last chat for this task. If none exists, Ren creates a chat.

Open the task, select Start, then choose Start new session or Continue last session. The new chat appears in the task’s activity.

Task chats can’t ask clarifying questions. Permission requests wait in the chat until someone answers.

Hand a task to another project

To hand work from one project to another, change the task’s project and start it again. Each project’s Ren keeps its own chat on the task. For example, hand it to Plan, then Build, then back to Plan: Plan picks up its own earlier chat.

If you use the CLI or the API, or ask Ren, you can pick a project in another space you belong to. The task moves to that space, and if its assignee isn’t a member there, the task is unassigned. In the app, you can pick only projects in the task’s space.

Open the task, change its Project, then select Start and choose Continue last session. Changing the project alone doesn’t start anything.

Archive a task

Archive a task you no longer need. It leaves the task list, can’t be started, and messages in its linked threads no longer route to it. Its chats stay in the chat list.

Open the task’s actions menu (the ⋯ button) and select Archive task. To archive several, select them in the list and choose Archive in the bar that appears.