Tasks
The Tasks tab (Ctrl+1) is the Kanban board. Every task crosses it from left to right, and each stage can be handed to a different agent.
The board
The toolbar above the columns:
- Search tasks... (Ctrl+F) filters by title, and Priority and Label filter by those.
- All, Pipeline and Loops filter by how tasks run.
- The agent slots badge, such as
2/4, shows how many agents are running against how many the connection allows. A session waiting in Review still holds its slot. - Manual or Auto decides whether tasks in Queue start on their own.
- Needs me, with a count, shows only the tasks waiting on you.
- Archive lists finished and cancelled tasks, searchable, and reopens any of them.
- New Task (Ctrl+N).
Creating a task
New Task opens the task dialog. A task is a title and a description, and everything else has a default:
- How it runs (git projects): Pipeline for work you will judge by reading it, the stages below, or Loop for work a command can verify. A loop runs in fresh sessions until its checks pass; see Loops.
- Description: Markdown, with a small toolbar, rendered when you are not editing it.
- Attachments: drop files on the dialog, paste an image, or browse. They are handed to the agent with the task.
- Workspace (git projects): where the agent will work. Create new worktree gives the task a branch of its own, cut from the base branch you pick; you can also check out an existing branch, Use the repository directory, or Reuse an existing workspace another task left behind.
- Priority: None, Low, Medium, High or Urgent.
Turn on Create another to keep the dialog open for the next one.
From your issue tracker
When the project has issue tracking set up (see Settings, Issue tracking), the dialog header carries an Import issue button with the tracker's logo. It opens a searchable list of the project's open issues, with a preview of the one under the cursor and a link to open it in the browser.
Picking an issue fills the dialog: its title and body become the task's, its type becomes a label, and its priority carries over when it matches one of Maestro's. You can still edit everything before pressing Create. Choose another issue swaps it, and removing the issue clears what it filled in. Import works with GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Azure DevOps and Jira Cloud.
An agent's answer can become a task too: every message in a session has Create task from message, which takes the first line as the title and the rest as the description. Select part of the message first to use only that.
Refining a thin description
Refine on a Planning card asks a read-only Refiner agent to read the repository and propose a better description. Read proposal shows it when it is ready, and Use this description replaces yours; nothing changes until you accept. It needs a Refinement profile under Settings, Agents.
How a task moves
Every task crosses the board left to right: Planning → Queue → In progress → Review → Done. Each stage can have its own agent, model and permissions, configured once per project as an agent profile (Settings → Agents). Stages without a profile are skipped, and any task can skip Planning or Review individually from its Agents button.
Planning
Nothing runs until you move the card. Refine it, edit it, or pick its agents here.
Queue
Drag a card to Queue and Maestro starts it as soon as there is room. Auto starts everything eligible; Manual starts only tasks you start yourself with Execute. Room is measured per connection, either from free memory or as a fixed number of agents.
In progress
If the project has a Planner profile, the Planner runs first, read-only, and stops at the plan gate. You can annotate the plan passage by passage, send the notes back for another round with Refine plan, or Start implementing. Approving starts a fresh Coder session with the plan text.
The Coder gets the workspace the task asked for. Two tasks running at once are two worktrees, so neither sees the other's edits.
The running card has Join, which opens the session in the Agents tab: the live stream, the side panel with its diff, files, terminals and canvas, and every question the agent asks. Abandon tears the session down, deletes the worktree and its branch, and puts the task back in Planning as if it had never run.
Review
When the Coder's turn ends with changes, the task moves to Review. If the project has a Reviewer profile, that agent goes first: read-only, with your project's review instructions, and it may send the work back to the Coder for rework up to three times without you.
Then it is your turn. The diff opens unified or split, expands context from any hunk header, and takes comments on a line or a range of lines. Rework sends those comments back to the Coder as one prompt. Approve asks how the work should land, under When this task is approved, and with which commit message; uncommitted changes are committed first. The push and pull-request choices need a remote:
| Choice | Result |
|---|---|
| Merge locally | Merged into the base branch, worktree removed, task Done |
| Commit only | Committed on its branch, worktree kept, task Done |
| Push only | Pushed to the remote unmerged, task Done |
| Open a pull request | Pushed and opened on the forge; the task stays in Review until it merges |
The project's default choice is set under Settings, Git.
A reviewer that can write is not a reviewer, so every role except the Coder runs under a permission mode that refuses writes. That is enforced by the agent's session mode, not by a prompt asking nicely.
Done
A task is Done with a record of how: merged, merged through a pull request, committed locally, or finished with no changes.
The task screen
Click a card to open it. A loop opens on its Loop tab, described in Loops. Details edits the title, description, attachments, labels, workspace and priority while the task has not started. Outcome is the task's thread: each agent's closing message when its phase ends (the proposal, the plan, the review verdict, the outcome), and notes you add yourself. Agents can read and comment on this thread too.
Start over throws away the work of a task that has run and is not running now, and puts it back in Planning or Queue to begin again from the base branch. Cancel task moves it to the archive and keeps its worktree and branch. Delete task (Ctrl+D) removes it.