Tasks

A Task is a piece of work to be done. Its description is the prompt the agent gets, so write it the way you would brief someone who has never seen the code.

One file per Task

Every Task is one markdown file under ~/.drudge/projects/<slug>/tasks/, named after its id and its title. The file starts with a front matter block of flat key: value lines between --- lines. The description follows as the raw markdown body.

The front matter holds what DRUDGE knows about the Task: its status, its ticket, its parent, what it waits for, the repositories it changes, the pull requests opened for it and the record of its last Session. It does not say which Drudger works on it. The Drudger knows that.

Every write re-reads the file under a lock, so two commands never overwrite each other’s fields. Change a Task with drg task edit and DRUDGE keeps it consistent.

Add a Task with drg task new, read it with drg task show, list them with drg task list and delete one with drg task rm. A command takes the short id a listing prints, as long as it names one Task.

Statuses

A status says where a Task stands.

• draft: written and waiting for you to review it.
• todo: ready to run. Only a todo Task can be handed to a Drudger. A new Task is todo unless you say otherwise or set task.defaultStatus in the config.
• in-progress: handed to a Drudger.
• fucked-up: the Session ended without getting the work done, or its Drudger was nuked while it worked.
• unmerged: the Session got shit done and its commits are on a branch that is not merged yet.
• done: the work is finished. A Session that got shit done and left no commits ends here. So does an unmerged Task you mark done with drg task done once its work is merged.

You move a Task between draft, todo and done. DRUDGE sets in-progress, fucked-up and unmerged itself, and drg task edit sets them only when forced. A Task the vendor turned away goes back to todo, see Sessions and runs.

drg task rerun starts an in-progress, fucked-up or unmerged Task over from scratch.

Dependencies

A Task can be blocked by other Tasks. A blocked Task is refused by drg task run and drg task rerun until every Task it waits for is done. When a Task becomes done, DRUDGE lists the Tasks that became runnable.

drg task next prints the oldest todo Task with no unfinished blocker. It starts nothing.

Deleting a Task unblocks the Tasks that waited for it.

Repositories

A Task can list the repositories of the project it changes. A Task that lists none changes all of them. The agent sees every repository of the project and is told to leave the unlisted ones alone.

Tickets and parents

A Task can carry the id of the ticket it came from, in whatever tracker you use. DRUDGE puts it in the prompt and can put it in the branch name. drg task list filters by it.

A Task can belong to a parent Task. Grouping is one level deep: a parent cannot belong to another Task, and a Task with children cannot get a parent. drg task list shows the children under their parent. Deleting a parent ungroups its children.

A parent does not block its children, and its children do not block it. Dependencies set the order.