Pick Up Next Task

A guided workflow for selecting and starting your next piece of work. Shows what's available, provides context, and gets you started efficiently.

Usage

/tasuku:pickup [task-id]

If no task-id provided, shows ready tasks and helps you choose.

Workflow Steps

Step 1: Show What's Ready

tk task ready

This shows tasks sorted by priority (critical → high → normal → low → backlog).

Step 2: Select a Task

If task-id was provided, use that. Otherwise, recommend based on:

• Priority level
• Whether it unblocks other tasks
• Time since creation

Step 3: Show Task Context

Before starting, surface relevant context:

# Show full task details
tk task show <task-id>

# Surface related learnings
tk find "<keywords from task>"

Step 4: Start the Task

tk task start <task-id>

Optionally with timer:

tk task start <task-id> --timer

Step 5: Surface Related Knowledge

Show any learnings or decisions related to this work:

• Search learnings for relevant keywords
• Show related decisions if any exist

Example Flow

User: /tasuku:pickup

Agent:
1. Ready tasks (by priority):

   CRITICAL:
   - fix-auth-regression: "Fix authentication bypass in admin panel"

   HIGH:
   - implement-rate-limiting: "Add rate limiting to API endpoints"
   - update-docs: "Update API documentation for v2"

   NORMAL:
   - refactor-logger: "Clean up logging utilities"

2. Recommendation: fix-auth-regression (critical priority, security issue)

3. Task details:
   - Description: Fix authentication bypass in admin panel
   - Tags: security, bug
   - Created: 2 hours ago

4. Related learnings:
   - "Always validate session tokens on every admin request"
   - "Never trust client-side auth state"

5. Starting task...
   ✓ tk task start fix-auth-regression

   Ready to work on: fix-auth-regression

With Specific Task

User: /tasuku:pickup implement-rate-limiting

Agent:
1. Task details:
   - implement-rate-limiting: "Add rate limiting to API endpoints"
   - Priority: high
   - Tags: api, performance

2. Related decisions:
   - rate-limit-strategy: Chose "token bucket" over "fixed window"

3. Related learnings:
   - "Use Redis for distributed rate limit counters"

4. Starting task...
   ✓ tk task start implement-rate-limiting

Why Use This Skill

• Informed selection - See all options with priorities
• Context loading - Relevant learnings and decisions surfaced automatically
• Quick start - Goes from "what should I do?" to working in one command
• Knowledge continuity - Previous learnings about this area are shown

Related Skills

• /tasuku:ready - Just list ready tasks (no workflow)
• /tasuku:start - Just start a task (no context loading)
• /tasuku:show - Show task details
• /tasuku:complete - When you finish the task