The task window

Opening a task floats one window over a blurred backdrop. Its first line is a breadcrumb — project → sub-project, saying where the task lives. Each name is a link to that project or sub-project’s Board, with keyboard and open-in-new-tab support. The top-right corner holds the window’s controls: the subscribe eye (§11 — open when you are subscribed, struck through when you are not; click it to see subscribers), the permanent ID, the "…" actions menu — Copy task ID, Copy link (permanent), Move to sub-project…, Archive, Delete (two-click); in the Inbox's task pane it starts with Open task in board (§11) — and Close. The task title (click it to edit in place) sits on the line below, under the chrome that acts on it. Under that sit two columns: the discussion (left, primary) and the details (right); when there isn't room for both they stack inside the same window, using its available width and one vertical scroll flow beneath the heading. On phones, the task fills the screen: Status and Assignee sit above Activity / Details tabs, and Back returns to the list. Details contains the description and the other properties, attachments and relationships. Switching tabs preserves unsent comment and description drafts. The Activity composer stays below the feed. On desktop it is also the Inbox's right pane (§11), where it fills the half beside your messages instead of floating — no backdrop, and no room for the details column beside them, so there the window is the discussion alone.

✦ What sets this apart — The layout is discussion-first: the conversation is the wide column, with the description pinned on wide screens, while the metadata stands aside. Mainstream tools bury the discussion at the bottom of a form.

The discussion column#

On wide screens, the description stays above the scrolling discussion; in a narrow task window, it scrolls with the stacked content. It's a true WYSIWYG editor — no view/edit toggle, no raw markdown ever shown — with headings, bold/italic/strikethrough/underline, inline code and code blocks, quotes, lists, links (Ctrl/Cmd+K), and markdown-as-you-type. Bulleted and numbered lists show their markers both while editing and when reading saved text. Type @ to mention a teammate: a user picker opens under the caret. Search with partial name, initials or email fragments in any order, including spaces between words. Choose with arrow keys + Enter, or click; the mention renders as a highlighted chip, and — in descriptions and comments alike — the mentioned person gets a message in their Inbox (§11), unless they wrote the text themselves, and starts following the task from then on. A formatting row sits above the text in every editor — text style, B/I/S/U, link, quote, code, lists (Ctrl/Cmd+B/I/U/E, Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+X) — applying to the selection, or to what you type next when there is none; it stays put while the text scrolls beneath it. The text-style button has room for its label and arrow, and the row is as transparent as the field around it in every theme, with or without a Canvas image. Clicking a link pops Open / Edit / Remove. Paste or drag images straight into the text — they render in place with hover Copy/Download, double-click for full size (and an image can never be pasted across tasks). Saving is explicit: a Save / Discard bar appears the moment your draft differs (Ctrl/Cmd+S) — and it stays pinned to the bottom of the field, so a long draft never scrolls its own buttons out of sight. The text scrolls between the formatting row and the buttons rather than growing without end, so neither ever covers a line, and a field that would otherwise slide below the edge of the panel brings itself back into view.
Comments use the same rich editor (text-only — images belong in attachments), and the box sits at the end of the conversation, directly under the newest message on desktop. Long comment drafts scroll inside the box, keeping its formatting row and save buttons within the visible border. Each comment shows its author's name, including your own. On phones it stays at the bottom of Activity while the conversation scrolls above. Above it, comments and system activity interleave on one spine that reads like a chat: oldest at the top, newest at the bottom. In the desktop discussion pane and the Activity focus window, the feed opens scrolled to the end. A stacked desktop task window starts at the description and lets you scroll through the conversation into the details. Phones separate Activity and Details into tabs. When a task has news you haven't read, a New line marks where it starts — see §11. There is an All / Comments filter. Comments — just the conversation — is the default; flip to All for the task's whole life in one feed: created, moved, assigned, paused, rescheduled, labeled, linked, attached. Field edits narrate both sides of the change — "moved this task from To Do to In Progress", "changed the remaining time on this task from 80 h to 40 h", "updated the description of this task from “…” to “…”" — so the feed answers what it was before without archaeology. (Description excerpts are capped at ~80 characters a side, and a pause logs as plain "paused"/"resumed".)
You can edit or delete your own comments; a project lead can moderate anyone's — and an edited comment discloses it in place: a pen glyph shows when it was last edited and by whom, marked "(project lead)" when that wasn't the author.
Either half can be read on its own. The Description and Activity headings each carry a pop-out button directly beside their name, like the actions beside Labels and Parent. The All / Comments filter stays at the right of the Activity heading. Pressing a pop-out opens that section — and nothing else — in its own window: a long specification with the full height to read (and write) it in, or a long thread without the description above it. It opens under the same heading the task window wears — the project → sub-project breadcrumb, the task's name below it, and its permanent ID in the corner — so there is never any doubt which task you are reading half of; the section's own heading follows underneath. That breadcrumb links to each project or sub-project’s Board, just as in the main task window. The name can't be edited here and the subscribe eye isn't shown; those controls stay in the task window underneath. The window is deliberately a size smaller than the task window on every side, so it is plain that something new opened rather than the task having changed shape, and it closes on the X in its corner or on Esc, which touches nothing else. The section moves there rather than being copied, so there is only ever one draft of a description and one reply box, and the All / Comments filter is the same switch in both places.

✦ What sets this apart — Every edit, description included, narrates both sides of the change right in the feed; and lead moderation that is disclosed right on the comment instead of happening silently.

The details column#

Status (shown only on tasks without active subtasks), priority, the read-only reporter, assignee, reviewer (also only on tasks without active subtasks), Remaining hours (an input on a leaf task; on a task with subtasks, a read-only Σ sum over them — see §2), Due (with the delay chip, §7), and the Plan pickers — always visible; picking a date on an unscheduled task schedules it. Where your access is read-only (§12) each of them still shows its value but will not open: the control is disabled and says why rather than sitting there live and having every change undone a moment later. The planned end can never pass the due date: an offending pick is rejected with a toast, not silently clamped. Then labels (press L), attachments (drag-and-drop, with the task's organization-wide per-file size cap), progress over subtasks, and the Parent / Subtasks / Linked tasks sections — each with a search picker that can also create the related task on the spot when nothing matches. Their task cards show titles and supporting metadata without task ID badges. (The "…" actions menu lives in the window header, top right.)

Reviewer sits directly under Assignee and is the same picker over the same eligible people, with No reviewer to clear it (§2). On phones it is on the Details tab.

Reporter, Assignee and Reviewer portraits have equal space above, below and to the left, with the field labels centered beside them. The read-only Reporter row uses the same thin rounded border and background as the Assignee control. Status, Priority, Reporter, Assignee and Reviewer share a common width where space permits. Plan keeps its start/end dates together and places duration and Plan on roadmap below; on small screens the dates can stack with Start and End labels.

Each label has a thin neutral rounded border enclosing its name and, when editable, its remove button. The Labels heading has no counter. A compact plus beside each heading opens Add label, Set parent, Add subtask or Link task; an existing parent's action uses a pen for Change parent. Each icon has an accessible name and tooltip, and the label picker also opens with L. Parent, Subtasks and Linked tasks cards show the task title above the project name, giving long titles room to wrap. Linked tasks place their relationship above the title as a glyph and a word: Blocks (an arrow leaving this task), Blocked by (an arrow running into it) and Relates to (a two-way arrow), all in plain grey text with no badge and no colour: a dependency is part of the plan, not a problem. When the linked task is Done, Blocks becomes Previously blocked and Blocked by becomes Was blocked by; Relates to keeps its usual appearance. Workflow status and the owner's portrait (the reviewer's while the task waits In Review with one) sit together on the right; tasks that group subtasks omit the status, and tasks nobody owns omit the portrait. Where you can remove a parent, subtask or link, its × button sits inside the card beside the portrait and removes the relationship without opening the task. Remove subtask clears the child's parent; the task itself remains. Attachment sizes sit below filenames, with their actions at the right edge.

Moving a task#

The Move dialog lists every sub-project you can write in inside the task's own organization — across projects and teams. Comments, attachments, labels, activity and relations all survive; the ID never changes. Labels are an organization-wide vocabulary, so a task keeps them wherever in the organization it lands — the dialog says so, and there is no warning left to give. The assignee, and the reviewer of a task without subtasks, must be able to hold work in the destination (§2): a move is refused while either lacks Edit access there or is switched off, so clear or change them first. A task with subtasks is never refused for its reviewer, who is removed instead.

Archiving — Done work leaves the room on its own#

Archived is a second axis, not a sixth status: a task keeps its workflow status (Backlog … Done) and additionally becomes archived — off the board, roadmap, overview, filters and workload math, but never deleted.

Automatic: the nightly sweep applies the legacy per-team archive setting to rows that still carry one. New teamless projects have no automatic archive threshold yet, so their Done tasks remain available until an organization-wide policy replaces that legacy setting. Where the sweep applies, a task that has sat in Done for the configured threshold (30 days by default) is archived. The sweep works leaf-up — a group waits until its active subtasks have left. Its saved status then applies again: a saved Done task can archive on a later sweep once its original Done age meets the threshold. A saved To Do task returns to To Do instead. Finished work fades out of the working set by itself.
By hand: the task window's "…" menu archives any task you can edit. Archiving takes the whole subtask tree with it, so the rule follows the subtree: a task or group whose descendant work is entirely Done archives on the spot, regardless of a group's saved status. Anything that would take unfinished work off the board first asks why, and the dialog lists every subtask that goes along (key and title, with status on tasks without active subtasks), so nothing is archived sight unseen. The note you type is required and lands in the task's comments, so the reason survives for whoever finds the task later. (The two machine surfaces, §13, archive without collecting a reason — automation states its reasons in its own systems.)
The Archive page (Archived tasks in a project or sub-project row's "…" menu, which opens it pre-scoped to that project) is a separate surface, loaded only when you open it and only for one project at a time: pick a project (or one sub-project) and Restore any row — the task returns to its board immediately, parents included if they were archived too. Desktop also offers a search within that project's archived tasks, using the same multi-word filter as the board. Phones omit that search box and ignore its text query. Restoring a still-Done task restarts its auto-archive clock, so a restore always buys the full threshold again. Archived tasks are never loaded anywhere else — a shared task link only resolves again once the task is restored.

✦ What sets this apart — Boards stay honest without housekeeping: finished work retires itself on your schedule, archiving unfinished work in the app demands a written reason that sticks to the task, and nothing archived is more than two clicks from coming back.