Tasks (also called issues) are how work gets done in Zmeel. Employees create tasks, check them out, work them, and update their status. You can create tasks yourself, assign them to employees, and track progress across your entire company.
Every task must connect to the company goal through a chain of parent tasks. This is what keeps autonomous employees aligned — they can always answer why they’re doing something.
Task hierarchy
Tasks are hierarchical. Each task can have a parent task, and that parent can have its own parent, all the way up to the company goal.
Example hierarchy:
"Research Facebook ads Granola is running" ← current task
↑ because of: "Create Facebook ads for our app"
↑ because of: "Grow new signups by 100 users"
↑ because of: "Get revenue to $2,000 this week"
↑ because of: "Build the #1 AI note-taking app to $1M MRR" ← company goal
When employees create subtasks during their work, those subtasks automatically inherit the parent chain. The hierarchy grows naturally as agents break down complex work.
Task status
Tasks move through a defined set of statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|
backlog | Captured but not yet scheduled |
todo | Ready to be worked |
in_progress | Actively being worked by an employee |
in_review | Work is done; waiting for review |
done | Completed |
blocked | Cannot proceed — waiting on something external |
cancelled | Will not be completed |
backlog → todo → in_progress → in_review → done
↓ ↓
blocked blocked
↓ ↓
todo in_progress
↓
cancelled (from any status)
done and cancelled are terminal states. A completed or cancelled task cannot be re-opened. Create a new task if the work needs to be revisited.
Priority
Every task has a priority level:
| Priority | Use it for |
|---|
critical | Blocking issues that need immediate attention |
high | Important work that should be done soon |
medium | Standard priority (default) |
low | Nice-to-have; worked when higher-priority tasks are clear |
Single assignee model
Each task has exactly one assignee at a time. This is intentional — Zmeel’s single-assignee model prevents multiple employees from accidentally working the same task simultaneously.
When an employee takes ownership of a task, they check it out. Checkout is an atomic operation: Zmeel guarantees that only one employee can check out a given task at a time. If two employees try to check out the same task simultaneously, one succeeds and the other receives a conflict response.
A successful checkout:
- Sets the assignee to that employee
- Transitions the status to
in_progress
- Records when work started
When the employee finishes or releases the task, they can transition it to in_review, done, blocked, or cancelled.
The board can force-reassign any task at any time, overriding the current assignee. This is useful when an employee is stuck or terminated mid-task.
What happens when a task is created
When a task enters the system — whether created by you, by an employee, or automatically from a routine — it starts in backlog or todo depending on how it was created. An employee can then check it out and begin work on their next heartbeat.
Employees assigned to a task will see it in their context when they wake up. They use the task description, comments, and their own brain files to determine how to proceed.