Blake Sims

Claude Code · SKILL

Task Management System

Slash command for task tracking

On this page 5 sections
  1. Step 1: Check for an existing ledger
  2. Step 2: Create the directory structure
  3. Step 3: Copy the canonical templates
  4. Step 4: Verify
  5. Done

You are setting up the task-workflow ledger for a project. The canonical templates ship with the plugin — copy them; never write ledger files from memory. This is the same bootstrap /task-workflow:task-start performs in Stage 0, offered standalone so a project can be initialized before any task runs.

Step 1: Check for an existing ledger#

If tasks/ does not exist, go to Step 2.

If tasks/ already exists, do not overwrite anything silently:

  1. Read tasks/main-template.md. If it contains an ## Intent Contract section and a DONE_WHEN heading, the ledger is already canonical — report that and stop.
  2. If it is missing those sections (a legacy template), tell the user their template predates the Intent Contract workflow and /task-workflow:task-start will not work correctly with it. Offer to upgrade: back up the old file to tasks/main-template.legacy.md, then continue with Step 3 (templates only — leave existing task folders and the populated global-task-manager.md untouched, other than telling the user new tasks will use the new template).

Step 2: Create the directory structure#

mkdir -p tasks/{planning,active,paused,completed}

Step 3: Copy the canonical templates#

cp ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/main.md tasks/main-template.md
cp ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/global-task-manager.md tasks/global-task-manager.md
cp ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/CLAUDE.md tasks/CLAUDE.md

Copy verbatim (cp only — no paraphrasing, no regeneration). When upgrading an existing ledger, skip global-task-manager.md if it already has task rows.

Then open tasks/CLAUDE.md and fill in the ## Project-specific rules section with the user (Git strategy, validation commands, delivery expectation, extra gates). Ask only what cannot be inferred from the repository.

Step 4: Verify#

find tasks -type f -name "*.md" | sort

Expect at least:

tasks/CLAUDE.md
tasks/global-task-manager.md
tasks/main-template.md

Confirm tasks/main-template.md contains ## Intent Contract and DONE_WHEN.

Done#

The ledger is ready. To work a task through it, run /task-workflow:task-start — it reads tasks/CLAUDE.md, creates the next task from tasks/main-template.md, and keeps tasks/global-task-manager.md up to date.