Making a task

Press C anywhere, or the + button. That is the answer nine times in ten.

One line is the whole task

The quick-add box reads the line as you type it. Everything except the words is optional, and the order does not matter:

Redraw the empty state !high @ada #WEB *design due:friday

You type	It means
`!urgent` `!high` `!medium` `!low` — or `!1` … `!4`	Priority. `!1` is the urgent end
`@ada` `@"Ada Lovelace"` `@me`	Assignee. Repeatable
`#WEB` `#"Public API"`	Project, by key or by name
`design` `"needs research"`	Label. Repeatable
`due:friday` `due:tomorrow` `due:2026-09-04` `due:+3d`	Due date
`every:weekly` `every:2w` `repeat:monthly`	Repeat

Underneath the box, what it understood shows up as chips. Nothing is ever applied invisibly, and the tokens stay in the line so you can delete one and watch the chip go.

Two behaviours are worth knowing before they surprise you:

A weekday always means the next one. due:friday typed on a Friday is next Friday. Somebody typing the name of today’s day means the one coming — otherwise they would have typed due:today.

A token nothing answers to stays in the title. !important is a word; !urgent is a priority. The difference is whether your workspace has something by that name, not whether the token starts with a sigil. @nobody, #hashtag and *asterisk all stay in the title as written. And an ambiguous @alex, where two people are called Alex, matches neither — quietly assigning work to the wrong Alex is worse than not assigning it.

The words in due: and every: work in all three languages: due:freitag, every:wöchentlich, due:demain.

The other six ways

From the board. Every column on a Kanban board has an add button at its foot, which creates the task already in that state. On the list and table layouts the same thing sits at the end of each group — so adding to a group grouped by assignee assigns it.

From a template. Settings → Templates & rules, or the template picker in the quick-add sheet. A template is a task written in advance: title, description, priority and a checklist that becomes real sub-tasks. See task templates.

By a rule. Something happens — a task enters review, a due date is three days out — and a task is filed automatically, addressed to whoever the rule names. See rules.

By importing. Project → Settings → Import from a file reads a CSV, and also reads exports from Jira, Linear, Plane, OpenProject, Trello and Todoist by shape. Nothing is written until you have seen the preview. See bringing a backlog in.

From outside, with no account. An intake link is a form. What arrives waits in a queue and becomes a task only when somebody accepts it, so nothing from outside lands on the board on its own. See intake forms.

By an assistant. An MCP client with a write-scoped token can file tasks, including in batches — where the whole batch is one transaction, so it either all lands or none of it does. See connecting an assistant.

What a new task gets by default


Identifier	The project key and the next number. Never reused, even if the task is deleted
State	The project’s default state — usually the first in the backlog or todo group
Priority	None. Not “medium”: an unset priority and a deliberate medium are different claims
Assignee	Nobody, unless you said otherwise or you added it into a group that implies one
Cycle	The active cycle, if you created it from inside one; otherwise none

Sub-tasks

Open a task and use Add sub-task, or drag an existing task onto another in the list layout.

A sub-task is a whole task — its own identifier, its own state, its own place on the board, its own assignee. That is a deliberate difference from tools where a sub-task is a checkbox: it means sub-tasks show up in searches and reports, and it means a sub-task can outlive its parent’s sprint.

If what you want really is a checklist, put it in the description as markdown checkboxes, or use a template — a template’s checklist becomes sub-tasks precisely when you want the heavier thing.