Dependencies

Dependencies let you declare that one task blocks another: "We can't light this shot until the animation is approved." Once set, Truetask surfaces what's actually actionable right now, warns you before you complete something blocked, and keeps everyone aware as blockers clear.

Dependencies are cross-board. A card on your Design board can block a card on the Development board — use that when real work spans teams.

Adding a dependency

Open any task. In the metadata panel you'll see a Dependencies row showing one of:

• + No dependencies — the task is free of any edges (click to add one)
• 🔗 Blocked by · N · Blocks · M — a compact summary of what's already linked

Click the row to open the dependency list. You'll see two sections:

• Blocked by — tasks that must finish before this one
• Blocks — tasks that are waiting on this one

Each section has its own + Add blocker / + Add task this blocks button. Clicking either opens a small picker.

The search picker

Type at least two characters to search by title. Results include tasks from every board you're a member of — pick a blocker from any project. Each result shows its board (and parent folder, if any) so you can disambiguate between similarly-named tasks on different boards.

The current task is excluded from the results automatically; tasks already linked are filtered out too.

Picking visually

Next to the search input is a crosshair icon. Click it to enter visual pick mode:

• The task detail hides (it comes back when you're done)
• The kanban board dims
• Hovering any card highlights it with a ring
• Click a card to link it
• ESC or the banner's X cancels

This is the fastest way to build a chain — no searching, just click.

Semantics: what "blocked" actually means

A blocked task is one whose upstream tasks aren't yet complete. Truetask treats blocked status as a signal, not a gate:

• Blocked tasks show a 🔗 chip with the blocker count on every view (Kanban, List, Calendar, My Tasks).
• You can still work on a blocked task — move it, edit the description, tick off checklists, attach files, log time. Everything except completion flows normally.
• When you try to complete a blocked task, you get a soft warning: "This card has N incomplete blocker(s). Complete anyway?" Click through if you want to — no hard block.

This matches reality: you can often start work before your blockers finish (prep, exploration, first drafts), but you usually shouldn't call it done until the blocker does.

What counts as blocking

Upstream state	Does it block the downstream?
Open / in progress	✓ Blocks
Archived	✓ Blocks (archive = parked, not done)
Completed	✗ Clears
Trashed	✗ Clears (restoring re-blocks)
Hard-deleted	✗ Clears

Rules

• Self-loops are rejected — a task can't depend on itself.
• Cycles are rejected at save time — if A → B → C already exists, you can't add C → A. The error explains why.
• Draft tasks can't be endpoints — publish them first.
• Cross-board is allowed and encouraged. The only restriction is that you must be a member of both boards to create the link.

Seeing dependencies on the board

The chip

Every task view shows a small 🔗 N chip on any card that has at least one incomplete blocker. The chip is amber-tinted so it reads at a glance without being noisy:

• Kanban cards — chip alongside tags
• List view rows — chip just before the title
• Calendar events — chip in front of the title text
• My Tasks rows — chip alongside the title

Hover the chip to see the count; click the card to open its detail and manage the deps.

Hover preview on the board

When you open a task as a floating frame (not a centered modal), hovering the Dependencies row activates a board-level preview:

• Cards on the board that aren't part of this task's dependency chain dim to ~25% opacity — spotlighting the ones that are.
• Dashed splines curve from the frame's corners to each related card:
  • Top-left corner → incoming "Blocked by" edges
  • Top-right corner → outgoing "Blocks" edges
• A small pulsing dot on each active corner anchors the chain.
• Arrows point upstream → downstream regardless of which side you're viewing.

Move your mouse away and everything snaps back. It's purely visual — no state changes.

Focus mode

Hover is great for a quick look, but you can't interact with the board without losing it. Click the tree-structure icon next to the dependencies row and the spotlight pins:

• The card frame slides to a corner of the viewport (animated, ease-out) — placed away from the related cards so the splines fan into the open space.
• The board scrolls automatically to bring related cards into the viewport, including cards inside virtualized lists that weren't rendered in the DOM yet.
• The splines + spotlight stay on without hovering, so you can read the related cards or use a second monitor.

Exit any of three ways: click anywhere on the board, scroll, or press Esc. Dragging the frame also exits.

Scope

The preview covers same-board edges only. Cross-board dependencies show up in the detail panel as "Private task" entries (if you can't see the other board) or as regular rows with the board label (if you can).

Focus mode is a Kanban-only feature — the button is hidden in List, Calendar, and Timeline views (the splines are anchored to kanban card positions).

Managing dependencies in list view

The List view has two optional columns: Blocked by and Blocks. Toggle them on from the column visibility menu (the ⋯ menu on the column header bar).

• Blocked by — the count of incomplete upstream tasks, rendered as the same 🔗 chip you see on cards
• Blocks — the count of downstream tasks this one is gating

Click any card's row to open the detail panel, then manage edges from there. The columns themselves are read-only counts.

Jumping between linked tasks

Every dependency row in the detail panel has a ↗ Open icon on hover.

• If the target task lives on the same board, clicking opens its frame following your usual click modifiers:
  • Plain click — centered frame (or stacks floating if Keep frames open is on)
  • Shift+Click — inverts your Keep frames open preference
  • Cmd/Ctrl+Click — isolates or opens that card alone
• If the target lives on a different board, clicking navigates you there and opens the card on arrival.

Actionable Now — the wedge feature

The most useful filter you'll use from this feature lives on the My Tasks page.

Between All · Active · Completed, you'll now see an Actionable tab. Click it to surface only the tasks:

• Assigned to you
• Not completed
• Not blocked by any incomplete upstream

It's a one-click answer to "what can I actually do right now?" — the clutter of parked, blocked, or waiting work disappears, and you see the set of tasks you can close today.

Filtering by dependency state on a board

On any board, open the Filter panel (funnel icon in the toolbar). Three new filterable columns are available:

• Actionable (not blocked) — show/hide based on whether the task is ready
• Blocked by (count) — filter by exact number of blockers
• Blocks (count) — filter by how many tasks this one blocks

Combine them with the usual filter operators (is true, equals, greater than, etc.) to build any view. Save the combination as a Saved Filter so you can apply it again in one click.

A common pattern: filter for "Blocks (count) > 0" to find all the chokepoints in your project — the tasks whose completion would unblock the most work.

Notifications when blockers clear

If you're a watcher on a task and its last blocker completes (or gets trashed, or gets hard-deleted), Truetask notifies you with a "is now ready to work on" message.

This is a high-signal notification — it only fires on the transition from blocked to actionable, never when a new blocker is added or removed without changing the state. Click through to jump straight to the task.

Mute the "dependency changes" bucket in Board Subscriptions if you prefer to opt out of dependency noise without affecting other notifications.

Dependencies in the audit log & digest

Every edge create/delete is recorded in the board activity feed on both endpoints' boards. The board digest email also tallies dependency changes alongside cards, comments, members, and tags — toggle the Dependency changes event type when subscribing.

Privacy on cross-board edges

When a dep spans a board you can't see, the activity entry and the detail panel both render the other side as "a private task" — you see that the relationship exists, but not the title. Symmetric on both sides.

Automations

A new automation trigger is available:

• Card Unblocked — fires the moment a task transitions from blocked to actionable.

Pair it with any action to auto-route unblocked work. Common patterns:

• Move to Ready — when a blocker clears, automatically move the task to a "Ready to pick up" list
• Notify a group — @mention the team so they know new work is available
• Add a tag — tag the task ready-to-start for visibility in saved filters

The trigger has no configuration — it just fires on the transition. See Automations for how to assemble a workflow.

MCP & API

Dependencies are fully exposed to the REST API and the MCP server for agent-driven workflows:

• GET /v1/dependencies?card_id=<id> — list edges for a card
• POST /v1/dependencies — create one
• DELETE /v1/dependencies/{edge_id} — remove one

MCP tools map 1:1: list_dependencies, add_dependency, remove_dependency. The MCP server respects all the same rules (cycles rejected, board membership required, drafts blocked).

Common workflows

Sprint planning

1. Create the sprint's tasks.
2. Use the visual picker to chain prerequisites — "design → implementation → review" for each feature.
3. Open My Tasks → Actionable to see who has unblocked work on day one.
4. As the sprint progresses, the list reorders itself — completing a prereq automatically unblocks downstream tasks.

Cross-team handoff

1. On your team's board, create the task you need from another team.
2. On the OTHER team's board, create the task you'll depend on.
3. Link them cross-board: your task is blocked by their task.
4. The other team sees the edge in their own activity feed and knows someone's waiting.
5. When they complete their task, you get the "ready to work on" notification.

Review gates

1. Keep a template-review-gate task on each board.
2. Every new feature task gets it as a blocker.
3. A reviewer completes the review-gate when they've signed off.
4. The feature tasks unblock automatically.

Limits and known edges

• Bulk complete does not currently show the blocked-card warning — completing many cards at once skips the per-card prompt.
• Moving a checklist item between cards doesn't adjust dependencies; deps are always whole-task level.
• Archiving a task does not clear it as a blocker — the task stays blocking until it's completed, trashed, or deleted. This is intentional; archived work isn't done work.