Project Management

Project oversight and coordination using Claude native Tasks with persistent plan files.

Principles: Token efficiency | Concise reports | Data-driven insights

When to Use

• Checking project status or progress across plans
• Updating plan statuses after feature completion
• Hydrating/syncing Claude Tasks with plan files
• Generating status reports or summaries
• Coordinating documentation updates after milestones
• Verifying task completeness against acceptance criteria
• Cross-session resume of multi-phase work

Core Capabilities

1. Task Operations

Load:

references/task-operations.md

Use

TaskCreate

,

TaskUpdate

,

TaskGet

,

TaskList

to manage session-scoped tasks.

• Create tasks with metadata (phase, priority, effort, planDir, phaseFile)
• Track status:

  pending

  →

  in_progress

  →

  completed

• Manage dependencies with

  addBlockedBy

  /

  addBlocks

• Coordinate parallel agents with scoped ownership

2. Session Bridging (Hydration Pattern)

Load:

references/hydration-workflow.md

Tasks are ephemeral. Plan files are persistent. The hydration pattern bridges them:

• Hydrate: Read plan

  [ ]

  items →

  TaskCreate

  per unchecked item
• Work:

  TaskUpdate

  tracks progress in real-time
• Sync-back: Reconcile all completed tasks against all phase files, update

  [ ]

  →

  [x]

  , update YAML frontmatter status
• Resume: Next session re-hydrates from remaining

  [ ]

  items

3. Progress Tracking

Load:

references/progress-tracking.md

• Scan

  ./plans/*/plan.md

  for active plans
• Parse YAML frontmatter for status, priority, effort
• Count

  [x]

  vs

  [ ]

  in phase files for completion %
• Cross-reference completed work against planned tasks
• Verify acceptance criteria met before marking complete

4. Documentation Coordination

Load:

references/documentation-triggers.md

Trigger

./docs

updates when:

• Phase status changes, major features complete
• API contracts change, architecture decisions made
• Security patches applied, breaking changes occur

Delegate to

docs-manager

subagent for actual updates.

5. Status Reporting

Load:

references/reporting-patterns.md

Generate reports: session summaries, plan completion, multi-plan overviews.

• Use naming:

  {reports-path}/pm-{date}-{time}-{slug}.md

• Sacrifice grammar for brevity; use tables over prose
• List unresolved questions at end

Workflow

[Scan Plans] → [Hydrate Tasks] → [Track Progress] → [Update Status] → [Generate Report] → [Trigger Doc Updates]

1. TaskList()

   — check existing tasks first
2. If empty: hydrate from plan files (unchecked items)
3. During work:

   TaskUpdate

   as tasks progress
4. On completion: run full-plan sync-back (all phase files, including backfill for earlier phases), then update YAML frontmatter
5. Generate status report to reports directory
6. Delegate doc updates if changes warrant

Mandatory Sync-Back Guard

When updating plan status, NEVER mark only the currently active phase.

1. Sweep all

   phase-XX-*.md

   files under the target plan directory.
2. Reconcile every

   TaskUpdate(status: "completed")

   item to phase metadata (

   phase

   /

   phaseFile

   ).
3. Backfill stale checkboxes in earlier phases before marking later phases done.
4. Update

   plan.md

   status/progress from real checkbox counts.
5. If any completed task cannot be mapped to a phase file, report unresolved mappings and do not claim full completion.

Plan YAML Frontmatter

All

plan.md

files MUST have:

---
title: Feature name
status: in-progress  # pending | in-progress | completed
priority: P1
effort: medium
branch: feature-branch
tags: [auth, api]
created: 2026-02-05
---

Update

status

when plan state changes.

Quality Standards

• All analysis data-driven, referencing specific plans and reports
• Focus on business value delivery and actionable insights
• Highlight critical issues requiring immediate attention
• Maintain traceability between requirements and implementation

Related Skills

• ck:plan

  — Creates implementation plans (planning phase)

• ck:cook

  — Implements plans (execution phase, invokes project-manager at finalize)

• plans-kanban

  — Visual dashboard for plan viewing