Capturing tasks

Once Slack is connected, capturing a task is one message.

The one-liner

/task Fix the login redirect @sam #bug !high ^friday

Slack immediately shows you a quiet "On it — capturing…" note (only you can see it), and a moment later RyTask replies with a confirmation: the new item's key as a link, plus its title. The item is created in the default project an admin chose during setup.

The text after /task is read by the same quick-add shorthand the web app uses — one grammar everywhere, so nothing new to learn:

Everything else becomes the title. A token only counts at the start of a word, so C# and sam@example.com are left alone, and you can write \# or \@ to mean a literal character. There is no estimate token — estimates are set in the app. The full grammar lives in the fast capture guide.

Capture never blocks on missing details. /task Just a title is a perfectly good capture: it gets the first workflow status and no priority, and you can fill the rest in later. If part of your shorthand couldn't be applied — say @sam matched nobody — the item is still created and the confirmation tells you exactly which tokens couldn't be resolved, so nothing is silently dropped.

The guided form

Type /task with no text and RyTask opens a small form right inside Slack instead:

• Title (the only required field)
• Description (optional)
• Priority (optional)
• Due date (optional)

The task goes to the connected default project; the form doesn't ask you to pick a project or assignee today. Submitting with just a title still creates the item with sensible defaults.

Who the task belongs to

If your Slack account is linked to your RyTask account, the captured item records you as the person who raised it. If it isn't linked yet, the item is still created — it just has no reporter, and the confirmation gently reminds you to ask an admin to link your account.

You don't need to be a member of the default project, or even have a RyTask account, to capture. Behind the scenes the capture runs under the context of the admin who installed the integration, so a teammate's quick /task is never bounced for permissions. What does get recorded is honest provenance: every item captured this way is stamped with the Slack source and shows a "Slack" badge in the app — on the item, in lists, and in its activity history.

What happens behind the scenes

The slash command only does the bare minimum synchronously — Slack requires a response within three seconds, and RyTask answers well inside that window. The actual creation runs on RyTask's background worker a moment later, which is why the confirmation arrives as a follow-up message rather than instantly.

This hand-off is replay-safe: each capture gets a deterministic job identity, so if Slack retries a delivery (which it sometimes does), you still get exactly one task, not two.