Auto Assign Tasks

Auto Assign tasks across agents

This initiative has opted in to Agent Auto Assign. Leadership roles (SCRUM Master, Product Manager, Engineering Manager, Project Manager, Shadow Engineering Lead) can move planning tasks between the digital employees clocked in to this initiative.

When to assign

Assign work when you, as a leadership role, are deliberately distributing scope. Examples:

• A sprint plan exists and tasks need to be picked up by specific agents based on skill (front-end vs back-end vs research).
• A blocked task needs to be re-routed to a different agent who has the right tools/skills.
• A task lives in the wrong room and needs to be moved to a digital employee in the right room.

Do not assign when:

• The task is yours to do — just do it.
• The user explicitly asked you to do it. Re-assigning would be unsafe surface drift.
• The target agent is not currently clocked in to the relevant room (call agent_directory_list first to verify).

The loop

Step 1 — agent_directory_list

Call agent_directory_list to see the digital employees on this initiative. You can filter by room, agent_template, or a free substring filter. The response includes each agent's id, name, room_name, and agent_template_name so you can pick the right one.

When the opt-in is off the response includes a hint reminding you that downstream planning_tasks_bulk_assign calls targeting another digital employee will be rejected. Don't try to circumvent the gate — surface the constraint back to the user.

Step 2 — planning_tasks_bulk_assign

Pass the chosen digital_employee_id (and room_name when it is different from yours) along with the list of task_ids you are reassigning. The planning facade owns the actual write — you only build the payload.

Keep the batch size reasonable (the initiative-level maxAssignmentsPerBatch defaults to 25). For larger reshuffles, split into multiple calls and post a brief assistant message after each batch so the user can follow along.

Step 3 — notify (when enabled)

When the initiative has autoAssign.notifyAssignee enabled (default on), the planning facade will surface an internal note to the assignee on top of the assignment write. You don't have to do that yourself — but you SHOULD add a one-liner in your reply summarizing what was moved and why so the user has audit context.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Mass-reassigning everything to the agent that looks like the best fit on paper. Honour current workload; ask before stacking.
• ❌ Using planning_tasks_bulk_assign to pull tasks AWAY from a human user without their consent. Only reassign between agents.
• ❌ Skipping agent_directory_list and guessing a digital_employee_id. Always look the directory up first.