Create Task Skill

Takes arbitrary text input — feature specs, meeting notes, brainstorm lists, bug reports, requirements docs — and decomposes it into structured, deduplicated tasks in the tusk database.

Step 1: Capture Input

The user provides freeform text after /create-task. This could be:

• •A feature description or requirements list
• •Meeting notes or brainstorm output
• •A bug report or incident summary
• •A pasted document or spec
• •A simple one-liner for a single task

If the user didn't provide any text after the command, ask:

What would you like to turn into tasks? Paste any text — feature specs, meeting notes, bug reports, requirements, etc.

Step 2: Read Project Config

Fetch valid values so tasks conform to the project's configured constraints:

tusk config domains
tusk config task_types
tusk config agents
tusk config priorities

Store these for use when assigning metadata. If a field returns an empty list (e.g., domains is []), that field has no validation — use your best judgment or leave it NULL.

Step 3: Analyze and Decompose

Break the input into discrete, actionable tasks. For each task, determine:

Decomposition Guidelines

• •One task per deliverable — if a feature has multiple distinct pieces of work, split them
• •Keep tasks actionable — each task should be completable in a single focused session
• •Preserve context — include relevant details from the source text in the description
• •Don't over-split — trivial sub-steps that are naturally part of a larger task don't need their own row
• •Group related fixes — multiple closely related bugs can stay as one task if they share a root cause

Step 4: Present Task List for Review

Show all proposed tasks in a numbered table before inserting anything:

## Proposed Tasks

| # | Summary | Priority | Domain | Type | Assignee |
|---|---------|----------|--------|------|----------|
| 1 | Add login endpoint with JWT auth | High | api | feature | backend |
| 2 | Add signup page with form validation | Medium | frontend | feature | frontend |
| 3 | Fix broken CSS on mobile nav | High | frontend | bug | frontend |
| 4 | Add rate limiting middleware | Medium | api | feature | backend |

### Details

**1. Add login endpoint with JWT auth**
> Implement POST /auth/login that validates credentials and returns a JWT token. Include refresh token support.

**2. Add signup page with form validation**
> Create signup form with email, password, and confirm password fields. Validate on blur and on submit.

...

Then ask:

Does this look right? You can:

• •Confirm to create all tasks
• •Remove specific numbers (e.g., "remove 3")
• •Edit a task (e.g., "change 2 priority to High")
• •Add a task you think is missing

Wait for explicit user approval before proceeding. Do NOT insert anything until the user confirms.

Step 5: Deduplicate and Insert

For each approved task, run a duplicate check before inserting:

tusk dupes check "<summary>"

If the domain is set and non-empty, include it:

tusk dupes check "<summary>" --domain <domain>

Exit code 0 — No duplicate found → Insert the task

IMPORTANT: Escape single quotes in all text fields by doubling them (' → '') to prevent SQL errors.

tusk "INSERT INTO tasks (summary, description, status, priority, domain, task_type, assignee, created_at, updated_at)
  VALUES (
    '<summary>',
    '<description>',
    'To Do',
    '<priority>',
    '<domain_or_NULL>',
    '<task_type>',
    '<assignee_or_NULL>',
    datetime('now'),
    datetime('now')
  )"

For NULL fields, use the literal NULL (unquoted) instead of a quoted string:

tusk "INSERT INTO tasks (summary, description, status, priority, domain, task_type, assignee, created_at, updated_at)
  VALUES ('Add rate limiting', 'Details here', 'To Do', 'Medium', NULL, 'feature', NULL, datetime('now'), datetime('now'))"

Exit code 1 — Duplicate found → Skip

Report which existing task matched and skip the insert:

Skipped "Add login endpoint with JWT auth" — duplicate of existing task #12 (similarity 0.87)

Exit code 2 — Error

Report the error and skip.

Step 6: Report Results

After processing all tasks, show a summary:

## Results

**Created**: 3 tasks (#14, #15, #16)
**Skipped**: 1 duplicate (matched existing #12)

| ID | Summary | Priority | Domain |
|----|---------|----------|--------|
| 14 | Add signup page with form validation | Medium | frontend |
| 15 | Fix broken CSS on mobile nav | High | frontend |
| 16 | Add rate limiting middleware | Medium | api |

Then show the final state:

tusk -header -column "SELECT id, summary, priority, domain, task_type, assignee FROM tasks WHERE status = 'To Do' ORDER BY priority_score DESC, id"

Important Guidelines

• •All DB access goes through tusk — never use raw sqlite3
• •Always confirm before inserting — never insert tasks without explicit user approval
• •Always run dupe checks — check every task against existing open tasks before inserting
• •Escape single quotes — replace ' with '' in all SQL string values
• •Leave priority_score at 0 — let /groom-backlog compute scores later
• •Use configured values only — read domains, task_types, agents, and priorities from tusk config, never hardcode
• •Adapt to any project — this skill works with whatever config the target project has