Migrate Tasks

/migrate-tasks — Add Frontmatter to Existing Tasks

You are migrating task files to include YAML frontmatter. This is a one-time operation per project that ensures all TASK.md files have the metadata structure required by claude-task-viewer.

Frontmatter schema:

---
status: pending              # pending, in_progress, completed, or blocked
priority: 999               # 1 (highest) → N; use 999 as default if unclear
gh_issue_ref:               # optional: owner/repo#123
---

---

Step 1 — Locate Task Folders

Find all task folders in the project:

1. Look for a tasks/ directory at the project root
2. Scan for subdirectories matching the naming pattern YYYY-MM-DD_* or equivalent (check CLAUDE.md for project conventions)
3. Each subfolder should contain at least a TASK.md

If you find tasks but no consistent naming pattern, ask the user for clarification before proceeding.

---

Step 2 — Check Existing Frontmatter

For each task folder:

1. Read the TASK.md file
2. Check if it already has frontmatter (starts with ---\n)
3. If it has frontmatter, skip that task — no action needed
4. If it doesn't, proceed to Step 3

---

Step 3 — Extract Metadata from Task Content

For tasks without frontmatter, infer reasonable defaults from the TASK.md content:

Status:

• Look for a "Status" or "## Status" section in the markdown
• Parse status indicators (🔵 In Progress → in_progress, ✅ Complete → completed, etc.)
• If no status found, default to pending

Priority:

• Tasks rarely have explicit priority set. Default to 999 (lowest priority, will be ordered later)
• If the user has notes about relative priority, feel free to adjust, but don't guess

GitHub Issue Reference:

• Look for any mention of GitHub issues (e.g., "resolves #123" or "fixes avanrossum/repo#42")
• If found, add as gh_issue_ref: owner/repo#123
• If not found, leave blank

---

Step 4 — Build Frontmatter and Update File

For each task that needs migration:

1. Create frontmatter with the values from Step 3:

``yaml --- status: priority: gh_issue_ref: --- ``

1. Preserve the entire original TASK.md content unchanged (everything after ---)

1. Write the updated file back to disk

1. Log each migration: "✓ Migrated tasks/YYYY-MM-DD_task-name/"

---

Step 5 — Confirm and Report

After all migrations:

1. Count total tasks processed
2. Show the user a summary:

• Total tasks scanned
• Tasks already had frontmatter (skipped)
• Tasks migrated
• Any tasks that had errors

1. Ask if they want to verify any specific task (offer to show a sample frontmatter)

---

Important Notes

• Non-destructive: This only adds frontmatter — no existing content is changed
• Idempotent: Safe to run multiple times; already-migrated tasks are skipped
• Reversible: If something goes wrong, the change is just removing the first 4 lines of each file
• Commit the changes: After migration is complete, ask the user to commit the changes: git add -A && git commit -m "chore(tasks): add frontmatter to existing TASK.md files"

---

Error Handling

If you encounter problems:

• Can't read a TASK.md: Skip it, log the error, and continue
• Malformed markdown: Still add frontmatter with sensible defaults; no parsing errors should stop the migration
• TASK.md doesn't exist in a task folder: Skip that folder and note it

Let the user know about any skipped or problematic tasks after the run.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: avanrossum
• Source: avanrossum/claude-task-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.