Project boards

Every project has a Kanban board for planning work as tasks. Open it from the Project boards section at the top of the sidebar.

The board takes over the window next to the sidebar — there’s no tab strip or side panel while it’s open. Next to it is the project chat, an ordinary conversation for the whole project: use it to plan, break work into tasks, or ask about the board. It always works in the project’s main checkout, so it has no worktree or branch picker.

The title bar’s Open and Actions buttons are hidden here. Switch between Board, Both and Chat in the title bar to see just the board, the board with the chat docked on its right (a third of the width by default; drag the divider to resize it), or just the chat. The choice is remembered.

Columns

Tasks move left to right through five columns:

Backlog: ideas and work that isn’t planned yet.
Todo: work that’s ready to start.
In progress: work that is being done.
Review: work that’s finished and waiting for you to check it.
Done: finished work.

Done is hidden by default, since it keeps growing. Click Show done in the toolbar to see it; the number next to it is how many tasks are done. It shows tasks finished in the last 30 days, with a Load older button for the rest.

Drag a card to reorder it within a column or to move it to another one.

Tasks

Click New task in the toolbar, or the + on a column’s header, to add a task. A task has:

a title and a description (Markdown),
a status (its column),
a priority: urgent, high, medium or low,
an effort: a T-shirt size from XS to XL, or unsized,
an optional epic;
optionally, the agent its chat starts with — which agent or provider, model, thinking level and permission (Ask/Bypass, or the agent’s own modes for agents that have them). Anything left at Board default uses the board’s settings.

Each task also gets a short number, such as #12, that stays with it. Numbers aren’t reused, even after a task is deleted.

Click a card to edit it or delete it. A card shows its number, priority, effort and epic, and a spinner with the elapsed time while its chat is working.

Planning by chatting

Agents can work the board too — see Tools. In the project chat (or any chat), ask for something like “break the settings rework into tasks” and they’re added to the board, with epics, priorities, sizes and the agent each should start with if you ask for them. You can ask it to start tasks as well, optionally naming the agent, model and thinking level to use.

Starting a task

Hover a card that hasn’t been started and click its ▶ Start button. Pick the agent, model, thinking level and permission its chat should use — filled in from the task’s own agent settings, else the board’s — whether the project chat follows it (see below), and whether to open its chat straight away. Then click Start. With no thinking level picked, our own providers think at a level that fits the task’s size: XS and S low, M medium, L and XL high.

Starting a task:

gives it a chat of its own, listed under Chats with the task’s number;
in a git repository, creates a worktree on a new task/<number>-<title> branch, off whatever the project’s main checkout has checked out, and runs the chat there — so several tasks can be worked on at once without touching each other or your main checkout;
moves it to In progress and sends the task — its title, priority, effort, epic and description — as the chat’s first message, asking the agent to move the task to Review when it’s done.

A started card has a chat button that opens its chat. The chat is a normal conversation: you can read along, answer questions, approve tool use and send messages of your own.

The project chat and task chats

The project chat and a task’s chat can message each other. A task’s chat sends progress, questions or blockers to the project chat; the project chat sends instructions or answers to a task by its number. A message from another chat shows in the transcript with From … above it (click it to open the sender). Ask the project chat things like “tell #12 to use the new API” or “what’s #9 waiting on?”.

Whenever a task’s turn ends, the project chat hears about it, with the task’s status and its last reply. Whether that wakes the project chat depends on whether it’s following the task:

It follows a task it started or has sent a message to, and one you start from the board with The project chat follows it ticked (the default). Then the task’s updates and messages wake it, so it can react: answer a question, send the next instruction, or start the next task.
Once you write in a task’s chat yourself, you’ve taken it over, and the project chat stops following it — even for a quick answer. Its updates still reach the project chat, but as notes: collapsed rows in its transcript that it reads the next time it runs, without starting a turn (or spending tokens) for each one.

A task chat the project chat isn’t following shows a banner above its message box; click Hand back to project chat to have it follow again. Messaging the task from the project chat does the same.

Messages to a task always wake it. A chat that’s busy gets a message once its current turn ends.

So two agents can’t keep answering each other forever, a chat that’s had 8 messages from other chats in a row, with nothing from you in between, gets further ones as notes instead. Writing in that chat resumes it.

Projects that aren’t git repositories

Without git there are no worktrees, so a task’s chat runs in the project’s one checkout. To keep tasks from changing the same files under each other, only one task can be in progress at a time there. If you’d rather run several anyway, open the board settings (the gear in the toolbar) and turn on Allow several tasks in progress at once.

Finishing a task

Drag a task to Done, or set its status to Done, when you’re happy with it. That stops its chat if it’s still working, marks the chat done, and removes the task’s worktree. The branch is kept, so its commits stay reachable; merge or delete it as you usually would.

If the worktree has uncommitted changes, or commits that aren’t on any other branch, AI Leash lists them and asks before removing it. Choose Keep it open to deal with them first.

Board settings

The gear in the board’s toolbar opens its settings. Set the agent, model, thinking level and permission the board’s tasks start with when they don’t pick their own. Anything left at Default uses the app’s default agent (Settings > Agents) with the model last used on it.

Epics

Epics group related tasks. Click Epics in the toolbar to add, rename, recolour, archive or delete them. Deleting an epic keeps its tasks; they just have no epic afterwards. Archived epics can’t be picked for new tasks.

Use the epic menu at the left of the toolbar to show one epic’s tasks, or only tasks with no epic. Group by epic splits the board into one row per epic; dragging a card into another epic’s row moves it to that epic.

In the sidebar

Each project in Project boards shows how many of its tasks are in progress (blue) and in review (amber). Chats started for a task appear under Chats with the task’s number. Use the filter button next to the project menu to choose how they’re listed:

Show all chats: task chats are mixed in with the rest, most recent first.
Group task chats at top: task chats come first.
Hide task chats: only other chats are listed. Open a task’s chat from its card instead.

Removing a project from AI Leash also deletes its board.