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Start with Tasks: put the work on one board and stay in charge

Tasks is the work board for your business: Claude, ChatGPT and connected tools write the tasks, each with who asked, area, customer, owner, priority and day; you decide, approve, steer or stop. Set it up two ways: tell Claude, or work from the app.

AAssistantLabs Team
Academy 9 min read Updated Oct 2026

What you need

Tasks is the work board for your whole business: follow-ups, fixes, decisions and promises, each with who asked for it, the area and customer it belongs to, an owner, a priority, a day, blockers and a full history of notes and changes. Claude, ChatGPT and any tool you connect write to it; you read it, decide and steer. Everything that needs you waits in one queue, and a decision made in a chat does not scroll away.

  • Tasks in your workspace. Open it from the app switcher in any AssistantLabs app, or at tasks.assistantlabs.io.
  • Claude or ChatGPT connected to your workspace. Install the AssistantLabs plugin once and the board comes with it. See Connect to Claude or Connect to ChatGPT.
  • Who writes tasks: you, Claude and ChatGPT, your agents, and the other AssistantLabs apps. A customer owed a reply, a promise the agent made, a failed payment or a lead nobody called back lands on the board by itself, with no duplicates.
  • Three real things on your mind: a call to make, a price to approve, a customer waiting on a decision. They are the first tasks.
A task is a note, never a message. Nothing on the board reaches a customer by itself. It is for you, your team and your agents, which is why it is safe to let Claude write to it.

This page is the hands-on start. For everything the app does, the screens that answer one question each and how it works with your other apps, read the Tasks app guide.

Connect Claude to the board

Install the AssistantLabs plugin once and Claude reaches every app, the board included.

Install the plugin once, as in Connect to Claude, then run /al and sign in on first use. The board is part of the plugin, with “You stay in charge”: everything that needs your decision on one board.

Then ask it something, to see the board is reachable:

Say this to Claude

What is on my task board right now?

An empty board is not an error. Claude says so.

Open Tasks from the app switcher, or at tasks.assistantlabs.io. The top bar has six tabs: Catch up, Needs you, Board, Customers, Shipped and Today’s plan.

“Needs you” carries a count of what is stopped on you.

Connecting Claude happens in Claude, with the AssistantLabs plugin: sign in with your account, no key to copy. Board views and “Let Claude use this board” are in the avatar menu, under Workspace settings.

Open the avatar menu and click “Workspace settings”.

Put your first tasks on it

You rarely type a task in yourself. You say it in the chat, and it lands on the board with who asked for it and whether it needs you.

Say this to Claude

Put these on my task board: 1. Call the supplier back about the linen delivery. Customer support, I asked for this. 2. Approve the new spring price list before it goes on the site. Sales, I asked for this, and it needs my decision. 3. Dana Levi wants the linen dress in a custom length and I need to decide if we take custom orders. Sales, she asked, and it needs my decision.

One create_task call per task. Claude writes them for you, and each is signed “claude” in its history.

Every task needs three things, and Claude takes them from what you said:

  • A title, one line: what needs doing.
  • Who asked for it. You, a customer, a system that noticed it, or your agent’s own idea. It is required because work you asked for and work an agent invented look identical in a title.
  • The area it belongs to: customer support, sales, marketing or billing.

If a task is about a customer, say the name: it is what makes “what is open for Dana?” answerable later.

Click New task on the Board, write the title, pick who asked for it and the area, and add the customer if there is one. Tasks also arrive from Claude, ChatGPT, your agents and your other apps. Board lists them all. Each row says the same few things, so you can scan it fast: priority, title, the customer, the area, who asked for it, who has it, and how long ago it moved.

Rows grouped by status. Open any row to see the task.
Areas in the app: Customer support, Sales, Marketing and Billing: pick the one the work belongs to, so “where did this week go?” has an answer.

Mark what needs your decision

A task that waits on you is the difference between a board and a to-do list. Mark it, and it shows up under Needs you with how long it has waited, and nowhere else is louder.

Say this to Claude

Mark the price list and Dana’s custom order as waiting on me.

If you said so when you added them, they are already marked.
  • Claude reads the task with get_task first, then changes only the status with update_task to blocked-on-a-human, which the app shows as Waiting on you.
  • The change is appended to the task’s history. Nothing is overwritten.

Open the task, and in The facts card on the side, change Status to Waiting on you.

Status is a drop-down in “The facts”.

The count on the Needs you tab goes up, so you can see from anywhere in the app whether something is stopped on you.

Grouped by why it is on you. The oldest row of a group is open, and “Open it” takes you to the task.

Approve, steer or stop

Your decision is a status and, usually, a line about why. Claude and your agents read the note the next time they touch the task.

Say this to Claude

What needs my approval?

I approve the price list, but keep the linen range at the old price until the end of the month. Record that on the task and move it forward.

Prefer to be walked through them? Type /al-needs-me. It goes one at a time, in plain language.
  • list_tasks with the “waiting on a person” status answers the first one.
  • add_task_note writes your reasoning, and update_task moves the status to in progress (or done). Both are signed “claude” and you can read them under What happened.

Open the task from Needs you or the Board. Write what you decided in the note box, press Add note, and change the status, or press Mark done.

The note box sits at the top of “What happened”.

Steering work that is already running

When an agent has already picked a task up, you do not have to wait for it to come back. Every task page has a Steer it box with three kinds: Amend (change what it is doing), Ask (ask it something) and Answer (reply to a question it asked you). The box says it plainly: it reaches whoever picks the task up.

Pick the kind, write one line, send.

Stop the agent is always on screen. The first click arms it, the second says Confirm stop.

Tabs, days and notes

Make the board read the way you think. A tab is a saved filter with its own grouping and order, and a day says when a task gets worked.

Say this to Claude

Add a tab called “Needs my approval” that shows only what is waiting on me, grouped by area, with the customer’s name on each row.

Set the price list for Thursday.

On Dana’s task, write a note: I will call her tomorrow morning.

  • get_board_schema and list_board_views first, so it does not duplicate a tab or invent a field.
  • save_board_view adds the tab, named in your own words. The ones that come with the app can be renamed or hidden, but never deleted.
  • update_task sets the day, add_task_note writes the note.

Open Workspace settings from the avatar menu. Under Board views, name the tab, pick a status and a grouping, and click Add view.

The tab appears on the Board straight away. “Open first” makes it the one the board opens on.
Your tab sits after the built-in ones.

To set a day, open the task and use Work it on in The facts.

Your first week

Three habits are enough. After a week the board holds what is on your mind, and you stop carrying it.

  • Say it where you are. A task comes up in a chat, a call or a customer message: tell Claude to put it on the board. Do not collect them for later.
  • Once a day, clear Needs you. An empty queue is the goal. When something needs a call only you can make, it lands there and nowhere else.
  • Once a week, ask what is stuck. Anything that sat untouched is either worth closing or worth dropping.
Questions that work from day one

What is overdue?

What is stuck?

Is anything open for Dana Levi?

What did we finish this week?

Each one is a list_tasks filter: scheduled overdue, waiting on a person, a customer’s name, status done.
Catch up is where the app opens. It answers “what happened while I was away?”, with what is waiting on you on top. The Tasks app guide covers the other screens: Customers, Shipped and Today’s plan.
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