Tasks Workspace

PrimeCal keeps tasks close to the calendar so you can move between time-based planning and actionable work without switching products. Tasks is a single unified hub with three internal tabs — Board, Focus, and Routines — so everything about "what do I need to do" lives in one place instead of being spread across separate navigation tabs. Household remains a separate sibling view in the main navigation, for shared inventory rather than individual work.

How To Open It

1. Open the main workspace.
2. Select Tasks.
3. Use the Board / Focus / Routines tab bar at the top of the page to switch between your task board, today's priorities, and your routine templates.

What The Tasks Hub Includes

Tab	What it is for
Board	The main Kanban board for active work — create, filter, and drag tasks between Todo/In Progress/Done
Focus	Today's routine and due tasks, in schedule order, plus optional Focus Sessions — see Focus and Scheduling
Routines	Build or clone recurring chore templates and start them on demand — see Routines and Templates

Household inventory is a separate top-level view (not part of the Tasks hub) — see Household Inventory.

Board: Filters And Quick Create

The Board tab's filter row stays deliberately slim by default: a search box, quick status chips (Todo / In Progress / Done), a Show archived toggle (see Archiving Completed Tasks below), and a single Due chip. Click More filters to open a popover with the full due-date range picker (this week/month/year, or a custom date) and label filtering — everything the quick row doesn't show is still one click away, it just isn't cluttering the page by default.

Quick Task: Capture Something In Two Fields

Both + New Task on the Board tab and + Add task in the calendar's Quick Add panel open the same Quick task dialog — the fastest way to get something off your mind and onto the board. It asks for exactly what a fast capture needs and nothing else:

1. What needs doing? — the task title.
2. Estimated duration — pick a preset (15m / 30m / 60m / 120m) or type a custom number of minutes.
3. Auto-schedule this task — checked by default. When it's on, PrimeCal finds the next open slot on your calendar and schedules the task there the moment you click Create task, using the same slot-finding logic as Focus and Scheduling.

Need more than that — a due date range, a label, a place, an assignee? Click More options… instead of Create task. It carries over what you already typed (title, duration, auto-schedule) into the full task composer described below, so nothing you entered is lost.

The detail composer (opened via More options…, or when editing an existing task) is grouped into collapsible sections — Essentials (title, status, priority, due date) is always open; Details (place, assignee, context, labels), Scheduling (duration, auto-schedule), and Checklist & notes collapse by default so you aren't scrolling past fields you rarely touch. In Simplified mode (see below) these extra sections start collapsed; in Standard mode, Details and Checklist & notes start open.

Ranking: Manual Drag-To-Reorder

Moving a card is immediate

A card you drag moves as soon as you drop it; the board no longer reloads itself first. If the change cannot be saved — you are offline, or the server refuses it — the card returns to where it came from, so what you see is always what was actually saved.

Within any column (Todo, In Progress, or Done), drag a task card and drop it on another card in the same column to reorder them — the position sticks the next time you load the board, for you and (if the calendar is shared) for anyone else who can see it. This is separate from priority (High/Medium/Low): priority is a property of the task itself, while rank is purely "where does this sit relative to its neighbors in this column," useful for lightweight day-to-day triage without having to open every task to change a field.

Dropping a card on a different column still moves it between statuses exactly as before — reordering only applies within a single column.

Archiving Completed Tasks

Finished tasks pile up in the Done column over time. Archiving hides a Done task from the board without deleting it — the task and its history are still there, just out of the way.

• Archive one at a time: open a Done task and use its detail view, or
• Archive everything at once: click Archive completed, which appears next to the Done column's header whenever it has at least one task in it.

To see what you've archived — or bring one back — turn on the Show archived toggle in the filter row. Archived tasks appear as a flat list with the date they were archived and an Unarchive button.

Auto-Archive On A Schedule

Rather than clicking Archive completed by hand, open ⚙ Settings on the Board tab to turn on Automatically archive completed tasks and choose how many days after completion a Done task should be archived (for example, 30 days). This is a per-user setting — it only affects your own tasks, and it's off by default so nothing is archived automatically unless you opt in.

Task Checklists

A task dependency links two separate tasks ("Cook dinner" depends on "Defrost chicken"). A checklist is different: it's a set of sub-steps inside one task, for something with several parts that don't need their own due dates or assignees.

Example: May creates one task, "Plan Emma's birthday party," with a checklist: "book venue," "order cake," "send invites." She checks each one off as it's done, and the task card shows progress ("2/3 done") without cluttering the board with three separate one-off tasks.

To use it:

1. Open a task (it must already be saved — checklists aren't available while composing a brand-new, unsaved task).
2. Open the Checklist & notes section in the detail composer.
3. Type a step and click Add, or press Enter.
4. Check items off as you complete them, or Remove ones you no longer need.

Checklists are per-task and don't affect Focus, dependencies, or automation — they're purely a way to track sub-steps without spawning more tasks.

Choosing Your Tasks Experience

The Task experience toggle has been replaced by Experience Modes. Task density is no longer a separate setting — it follows whichever Experience Mode you're in:

• Production mode — the default. Full task board with all filter chips, Focus shows the complete list plus the Focus Sessions timer, and the composer's Details/Checklist sections start expanded.
• Focus mode — fewer choices on screen at once: Board's status chips collapse to just Todo/Done, Focus shows one task at a time with a single big Done button and no timer, and the composer's extra sections start collapsed.

Focus mode is aimed at anyone who wants less on-screen noise and fewer simultaneous decisions — useful whether that's because you're managing ADHD, supporting an autistic child's task list, or you simply prefer a quieter interface. It doesn't hide or remove any capability — it only changes what's visible by default. See Focus Mode for the full picture, and Focus and Scheduling for exactly how it changes the Focus tab.

Good Task Habits

• Use labels for areas such as School, Home, or Errands.
• Keep titles short and action-oriented.
• Add due dates only when timing truly matters.
• Use the default Tasks calendar for task-related planning instead of mixing these items into normal event calendars.
• Reach for Quick task for anything you'd otherwise jot on a sticky note — you can always add the rest of the details later via More options… or by editing the task afterward.
• Drag within a column to put today's real priorities at the top, rather than relying on due dates alone.
• Turn on auto-archive once your Done column regularly has old, no-longer-relevant tasks in it — 30 days is a reasonable starting point.

Developer Reference

For task contracts and label routes, use the Tasks API.