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Glossary
Every term Truetask uses, in one place. Where a word means something specific in the product, this is the meaning the app itself uses.
A
Agent An AI teammate with its own account, name and handle. You give it powers and guardrails, add it to boards like a person, and assign it work.
Agent workflow The process an agent follows on a board, written as an ordered list of steps. A board can hold several, and Truetask ships built-in ones you can copy and edit, such as Coding agent, Code review, Triage and Research report.
Attention strip The row at the top of the Tasks page that counts what is waiting on you: questions, approvals, failed runs, overdue tasks, tasks due soon, stalled runs and pipelines that need a human. When there is nothing, it says so.
Audit log The record of who changed what, with the actor, the action, the record and a diff. Automations and agents appear in it under their own name. Read it in Settings > Audit & Security > Audit Log.
Auto-start A power. Truetask calls the agent's webhook whenever a workflow hands it work, and whatever you run at the other end decides what to launch.
Automation A rule on a board: one trigger, then a graph of actions, conditions, loops and AI steps. You build it on a canvas in the board's Automations view.
B
Board A workspace for one stream of work: lists, tasks, members, and the views that show them. Boards live in the sidebar and can be grouped into folders.
Board details The panel holding a board's own fields: status, summary, start and end dates, visibility and any board-scoped custom fields.
Board flow The dialog that sorts a board's lists into lanes and caps work in progress. Every board needs at least one In Progress list and one Done list.
Board status A board's own lifecycle marker: Planned, Active, Paused, Done or Cancelled. Planned, Active and Paused boards count toward portfolio numbers; Done and Cancelled boards are grouped apart and left out.
Brief The structured part of a task description that an agent reads before it starts: Current behavior, Desired behavior and Out of scope, plus the definition of done. A workflow can require a complete brief, ask the agent to draft the missing parts, or ignore briefs entirely.
C
Cancelled lane A second finish line for work you will not do: declined, duplicate or obsolete. Tasks there are set aside without counting as completed, stay out of stats and the WIP limit, and release anything blocked on them. Optional.
Checklist A list of sub-items on a task, each one tickable, assignable and datable.
Command palette The search-and-run box you open with Cmd/Ctrl+K. It finds boards, tasks, notes and actions, and accepts a task key such as DEVE-412.
Custom field An extra field you define and attach where you need it. There are 19 types, including select, date, user, currency, rating, relation, rollup and formula, and a field can be scoped to tasks or to the board itself.
D
Database A board whose job is records rather than tasks. It is limited to the List, Forms and Automations views, and that set cannot be changed.
Definition of done The criteria a task must meet before it counts as finished. An agent verifies each one before it proposes done.
Dependency A link that says one task blocks another. A blocked task shows how many tasks are in its way.
Digest A summary of a board's activity instead of real-time notifications. Subscribe from the board page menu, pick daily or weekly, choose in-app, email or both, and tick which kinds of activity it covers.
Draft A task only you can see. Publish it when it is ready for the rest of the board.
E
Endpoint An incoming webhook: a URL other systems call, usually with a POST and a JSON or form body. Automations subscribe to it with an Incoming webhook trigger. An endpoint can also be pointed at an inbound email service so mail arrives as a request.
Estimate How long a task should take, written the way you say it: 2h 30m, 1d 4h. One day is 8 hours and one week is 5 days.
External access A power. Other tools work in Truetask as this agent, through an MCP token pasted into the tool. The token only ever reaches Truetask, never your computer.
F
Flow lane One of the five phases a list can sit in: Idle, In Progress, Review, Done or Cancelled. Only In Progress counts toward the WIP limit; moving a task into a Done list completes it.
Form A questionnaire that creates a task or a record when someone submits it. Forms live on a board's Forms view and can be shared publicly or opened inside the app.
Formula A computed custom field. You write an expression over the same record's fields by name in braces, such as {Quantity} * {Unit cost}, with arithmetic, comparisons, and/or/not and functions like round, if and days_until.
G
Group A named set of people you can mention and assign as one. The workspace calls them Teams in Settings.
Guardrail A permission you can withhold from an agent. There are five: Complete, Archive, Delete, Merge PRs and Read the web. Only the agent's owner sets them, never the agent itself.
H
Handoff The moment a workflow step finishes and the next step belongs to a different agent. How the next agent starts is the workflow's handoff mode: notify a human, call a runner's URL, or trigger an Agent Handoff automation.
I
Inbox Your personal capture list. It opens as a dock beside whatever page you are on, takes a title and optional details, and holds items until you file them.
K
Key A task's human identifier, like DEVE-123. The letters are the board's prefix and the number is the task's number on that board. Search, git branch names and commit messages all use it.
Kickoff A request to start an agent on a task. It is durable: Truetask keeps trying to deliver it through the agent's powers, marks it started when a run appears, and expires it if nothing picks it up, after 24 hours by default.
L
List A column of tasks on a board. Each list sits in a flow lane and can carry a WIP limit.
Local access A power. The agent works on your own computer through the desktop app, reading and editing local files with your permission, using the coding tool and subscription you already have.
M
MCP Model Context Protocol, the way an outside AI tool talks to your workspace. Truetask serves it at <your workspace>/mcp over Streamable HTTP and at <your workspace>/mcp/sse over SSE, authenticated with a personal token.
Milestone A dated marker on a board that tasks can be grouped under. Milestones show on the Timeline view and in their own panel.
N
Needs input The run state where an agent has asked a blocking question and is waiting for a person to answer. The task shows the question and its one-click options.
Note A Markdown document that lives on a board. Notes support wikilinks, embeds, comments, version history and publishing.
O
Overseer The portfolio view across boards: velocity, remaining scope, what is idle, in progress or in review, and an activity feed over a date range. Available to workspace Owners and Admins.
P
Pipeline A chain of tasks run in order, usually by agents. It has its own drawer along the bottom of the app and moves through Draft, Running, Paused, Needs attention, Complete or Cancelled.
Power What an agent is wired up to do. There are three: External access, Local access and Auto-start.
Priority A task's urgency. Truetask ships four levels, Low, Medium, High and Critical, and a task can also have none.
Proposal What an agent produces instead of completing a task itself. It posts a summary, Truetask checks the claim against the task's real state, and a human approves it or returns it with feedback.
R
Record A row on a database board, the database equivalent of a task.
Relation A custom field that links a record to other tasks or boards. It can point at one or many, and the link is real, so a rollup can read across it.
Rollup A computed custom field that aggregates values from the records a relation points at, or from a board's tasks. The property is Count, Sum, Average, Min, Max, Percent done, Earliest or Latest.
Run One agent session on one task, with its steps, its log and a status. A run can be active, blocked, needing input, waiting for the next agent, stalled, returned, approved, completed, failed or cancelled.
Runner A small always-on service you host that turns a kickoff into real work. Truetask calls it at the agent's webhook URL; the runner starts a coding CLI and the agent does the task through MCP as its own account.
S
Saved filter A set of board filters you named and kept. You can share one with everyone on the board.
Signing secret The shared secret that signs an outgoing call so the receiver can prove it came from your workspace. It is stored write-only: you can replace it, but nobody, including you, can read it back.
Source form The form a task came from, when it was created by a submission. You can filter a board by it.
Stalled A run that has gone silent. When there has been no agent activity for more than 30 minutes, a watchdog flags the run and notifies the people involved; any real activity clears the flag by itself.
T
Tag A coloured label on a task, defined per board.
Task The unit of work: a title, a Markdown description, members, tags, dates, a priority, checklists, files, custom fields and a comment thread. The API and webhook events call it a card.
Template A saved starting point. A task template prefills a new task, a board template creates a whole board, and an automation template installs a ready-made rule.
Timesheet The weekly view of tracked time per person, with approvals. Available to workspace Owners, Admins and Leads.
Truetask AI The assistant built into the workspace. It reads what you are looking at, answers questions about it, and can make changes for you.
V
View Two different things. A board view is one of the tabs on a board: Kanban, List, Calendar, Timeline, Notes, Files, Forms, Code or Automations. A work view is a saved slice of your own work on the Tasks page, with a Who scope and filters, which you can pin to the sidebar or share with everyone.
W
Watcher Someone following a task without being assigned to it. Watchers get the task's notifications.
Webhook Two directions. An outgoing webhook posts a JSON payload to your URL when an event you subscribed to happens. An incoming webhook is an endpoint other systems call to start your automations.
WIP limit A cap on how many tasks may sit in a list at once. It applies to the In Progress lane, and it is checked as a task enters.
Workspace Your whole Truetask instance: its people, boards, notes, settings and data.