Core concepts
Six words carry most of the meaning in this product.
Project
Section titled “Project”A container for tasks, sprints, columns, categories, custom fields and members. Each project has a unique key (ORB) which prefixes its task keys. Projects are independent: columns and fields configured in one do not leak into another.
The unit of work. It has a key (ORB-14), a title, an optional Markdown description, a priority, a category, an assignee, a status, and whatever custom fields the project defines. Tasks can carry acceptance criteria as a checklist, link to pull requests, block one another, and belong to a sprint.
Column and column role
Section titled “Column and column role”A column is what you see on the board. A role is what automation sees. Every column carries exactly one of six roles:
| Role | Meaning | Default column |
|---|---|---|
backlog |
Captured, not approved. Agents leave these alone. | Planned |
approved |
Ready to be picked up. Workers claim from here. | To Do |
active |
Being worked on right now. | In Progress |
review |
Waiting for a check. A human gate. | In Review, Needs Human Review, Ready to Test |
blocked |
Stopped by something outside the task. | — |
done |
Finished. | Done |
Rename To Do to Ready for dev and nothing breaks, because the automation reads approved, not the label.
Sprint
Section titled “Sprint”A named, time-boxed period with a goal. A sprint is planned, active or completed, and tasks are assigned to it individually. Sprints are optional — a board works fine without them.
Category and custom field
Section titled “Category and custom field”Categories are the built-in task types (bug, doc, user-story, idea), editable per project. Custom fields are anything else you want to record: a dropdown for sizing, a date, a number, a checkbox. Custom fields can appear as a column in the list view and drive filters.
Agent, PM agent and worker
Section titled “Agent, PM agent and worker”Three different things, easy to confuse:
- An agent is any MCP client acting on the board — usually Claude Code in your terminal.
- The PM agent lives inside the app. You chat with it about a project; it can also review the board on a schedule.
- A worker is a process on a machine you control. It claims approved tasks, runs a coding agent in an isolated checkout, enforces merge gates, and reports every step back to the task.