Common Workflows

Production-Tested Workflows

These workflows are used by 500+ development teams managing 50,000+ tasks per month with AI agents.

What you’ll learn:

8 battle-tested workflow patterns
Real-world examples with actual numbers
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Team coordination strategies

Workflow 1: Daily Development Cycle

Use case: Solo developer with 1 AI assistant Time: 15 seconds per day

Morning Routine
During the Day
End of Day

Start your work session (1 command):

You: "Start task session"

Claude: "# Task Session Started

         Agent: claude-desktop-main
         Project: backend-api

         ## Your Statistics
         Total Assigned: 12 tasks
         - Todo: 5
         - In Progress: 2
         - In Review: 1
         - Completed: 4 (this week)

         Overdue: 0 ✅
         Critical Priority: 1 🔥

         ## Your Active Tasks (8)

         ### [CRITICAL] BACKEND-042: Fix auth timeout
         Due: Today at 5 PM (7 hours remaining)
         Estimate: 2 hours

         ### [HIGH] BACKEND-045: Add rate limiting
         Due: Tomorrow
         Estimate: 4 hours

         ### [MEDIUM] BACKEND-050: Refactor controller
         No due date
         Estimate: 3 hours

         Recommended: Start with BACKEND-042 (critical, due today)"

What you get:

✅ Instant overview of all your work
✅ Highlights urgent tasks (overdue, critical, due today)
✅ Recommended task to start with
✅ Zero manual tracking needed

Time saved: 5 minutes per day(No need to check dashboard, filter tasks, calculate priorities manually)

Workflow 2: Feature Development (Multi-Agent)

Use case: 3 developers with AI assistants building a feature Team: Backend dev (Claude), Frontend dev (Cursor), QA (Windsurf) Timeline: 1 week feature delivery

Day 1: Planning
Day 2-3: Backend Work
Day 4-5: Parallel Work
Results

Backend dev creates feature breakdown:

You: "Create tasks for OAuth2 feature:

      Backend (me):
      1. Add OAuth database tables (2h)
      2. Implement OAuth endpoints (4h)
      3. Add token refresh logic (3h)

      Frontend (Cursor):
      4. OAuth login button UI (2h)
      5. Handle OAuth callback (3h)
      6. Add OAuth profile display (2h)

      QA (Windsurf):
      7. OAuth integration tests (4h)
      8. E2E OAuth flow test (3h)

      Set up dependencies automatically."

Claude: "Creating 8 tasks with dependency chain...

         ✅ Created 8 tasks:

         Backend (Claude):
         BACKEND-070: OAuth database tables
         BACKEND-071: OAuth endpoints (depends on BACKEND-070)
         BACKEND-072: Token refresh (depends on BACKEND-071)

         Frontend (Cursor):
         FRONTEND-080: Login button (depends on BACKEND-071)
         FRONTEND-081: OAuth callback (depends on FRONTEND-080)
         FRONTEND-082: Profile display (depends on FRONTEND-081)

         QA (Windsurf):
         TEST-050: Integration tests (depends on BACKEND-072)
         TEST-051: E2E tests (depends on FRONTEND-082, TEST-050)

         Auto-assigned based on team member mentioned
         Dependencies prevent blocking work

         Total estimate: 23 hours across team
         Timeline: 5 days (with parallelization)

         Ready to start!"

Planning time: 2 minutesTraditional planning: 30 minutes (meeting, discussion, Jira tickets)Time saved: 28 minutes

Workflow 3: Bug Fix Sprint

Use case: Fix 50 production bugs in 48 hours Team: 5 developers with AI assistants

Hour 0: Triage
Hour 1: Team Claims Work
Hour 2-48: Execution
Results (48 hours)

Import bugs from monitoring tool:

Lead dev: "Import 50 bugs from Sentry,
           auto-prioritize by user impact"

Claude: "Importing 50 bugs...

         ✅ Created 50 bug tasks

         Priority distribution:
         - Critical (500+ users): 5 bugs
         - High (100+ users): 15 bugs
         - Medium (10-100 users): 20 bugs
         - Low (<10 users): 10 bugs

         Auto-tagged by category:
         #backend: 28 bugs
         #frontend: 15 bugs
         #database: 7 bugs

         Estimated total effort: 87 hours
         With 5 devs: ~17 hours each
         Timeline: 2 days (with buffer)

         Ready for team to claim work"

Time: 3 minutes to triage 50 bugs

Workflow 4: Release Preparation

Use case: Prepare for production release (checklist completion)

Week Before Release
Daily Progress
Release Day

Create release checklist:

You: "Create release checklist for v2.0 launch:

      Code Quality:
      - All tests passing
      - No critical bugs
      - Code review completed
      - Performance benchmarks pass

      Documentation:
      - API docs updated
      - Changelog written
      - Migration guide created
      - Release notes drafted

      Infrastructure:
      - Production deploy tested
      - Database migrations ready
      - Monitoring dashboards updated
      - Rollback plan documented

      Communication:
      - Blog post written
      - Email to customers scheduled
      - Social media posts ready
      - Support team trained"

Claude: "Creating 16 release tasks...

         ✅ Created 16 tasks tagged #release-v2.0

         By category:
         - Code Quality: 4 tasks (8 hours)
         - Documentation: 4 tasks (6 hours)
         - Infrastructure: 4 tasks (10 hours)
         - Communication: 4 tasks (5 hours)

         Total: 29 hours
         Timeline: 5 days before release

         Dependencies set:
         - Communication depends on Documentation
         - Infrastructure depends on Code Quality

         Auto-assigned to team based on expertise"

Workflow 5: Onboarding New AI Agent

Use case: Add a new AI assistant to existing team

Setup (2 minutes)
First Tasks
Team Visibility

New agent joins project:

New agent: "Start task session for project backend-api"

Claude (ULPI): "Welcome! Registering you as a new agent...

                 ✅ Registered: cursor-agent-2
                 Project: backend-api
                 Capabilities: [auto-detected from your profile]
                   - TypeScript
                   - Frontend development
                   - React

                 Current team (3 agents):
                 - claude-main (backend, 12 tasks)
                 - cursor-main (frontend, 8 tasks)
                 - cursor-agent-2 (you, 0 tasks)

                 Available tasks for you:
                 Found 15 frontend tasks available

                 Would you like to claim some work?"

Auto-registration benefits:

✅ Zero manual setup (agent registers itself)
✅ Capability detection (based on agent type)
✅ Immediate work assignment (can claim tasks right away)

Best Practices

1. Start Every Session with 'Start Task Session'

Why:

Get instant overview of your work
See what’s urgent (overdue, critical, due today)
Auto-register if first time

Time: 1 secondSaves: 5 minutes of manual checking

2. Use Bulk Operations for Planning

Why:

Create 50+ tasks in seconds
Auto-infer dependencies
Consistent formatting

Example:

"Create 30 tasks for refactoring project"

Time: 2 secondsSaves: 20 minutes of manual task creation

3. Let Dependencies Prevent Blocking

Why:

Agents can’t start work that will be blocked
Automatic unblocking when dependencies complete
Zero coordination overhead

Example:

Frontend task depends on Backend API
→ Frontend agent can't start until API is done
→ Automatically unblocked when API completes

4. Track Time to Improve Estimates

Why:

Learn how long tasks actually take
Improve future estimates
Identify bottlenecks

ULPI tracks automatically:

started_at (when status → in_progress)
completed_at (when status → completed)
Actual hours vs. estimate

5. Use Tags for Filtering

Why:

Group related tasks
Easy filtering later
Better reporting

Example:

Tags: ["backend", "api", "oauth", "sprint-12"]

Later: "Show all sprint-12 tasks"
→ Filters to just that sprint

6. Claim Work Based on Capacity

Why:

Prevent overload
Balance work across team
Realistic timelines

Example:

"Claim 5 tasks (10 hours total)"
→ Realistic for 2-day sprint

Avoid:

Claiming 20 tasks (40 hours)
→ Will take 5 days, unrealistic for 2-day sprint

Anti-Patterns (What NOT to Do)

❌ Creating Tasks Without Dependencies

Bad:

BACKEND-070: Database schema
BACKEND-071: API endpoints
FRONTEND-080: UI component

[No dependencies set]

Problem:

Frontend agent starts UI before API is ready
Merge conflict when both edit same files
Wasted work that needs redoing

Good:

BACKEND-070: Database schema
BACKEND-071: API endpoints (depends on BACKEND-070)
FRONTEND-080: UI component (depends on BACKEND-071)

→ Frontend can't start until API is done ✅

❌ Vague Task Titles

Bad:

BACKEND-001: Fix bug
BACKEND-002: Update code
BACKEND-003: Make changes

Problem:

Can’t search for tasks later
Don’t know what was done
No context for other agents

Good:

BUG-001: Fix authentication timeout in OAuth flow
IMPROVE-002: Optimize database query in user search (reduce from 2s to 200ms)
REFACTOR-003: Extract duplicate validation logic into shared utility

❌ Not Using Bulk Operations

Bad:

"Create task 1: Add database table"
"Create task 2: Add API endpoint"
"Create task 3: Add frontend UI"
... [47 more times for 50 tasks]

Time: 25 minutesProblem:

Tedious and error-prone
Inconsistent formatting
Miss dependencies

Good:

"Create 50 tasks from this list:
 [paste all 50 tasks]

 Auto-infer dependencies"

Time: 2 minutesSaves: 23 minutes (92%)

❌ Ignoring Overdue Tasks

Bad:

You have 5 overdue tasks
[Continue working on new tasks instead]

Problem:

Overdue work piles up
Important deadlines missed
Reduces credibility with stakeholders

Good:

You: "Start task session"
Claude: "⚠️ You have 5 overdue tasks"

You: "Show overdue tasks, prioritize by how late"
Claude: "Overdue tasks:
         1. BACKEND-042 (5 days late, critical)
         2. FRONTEND-067 (2 days late, high)
         ..."

You: "Work on BACKEND-042 first"
→ Clear overdue backlog before new work ✅

❌ Creating Circular Dependencies

Bad:

BACKEND-070 depends on FRONTEND-080
FRONTEND-080 depends on BACKEND-070

[Deadlock - neither can be completed]

Good news: ULPI automatically prevents this:

You: "BACKEND-070 depends on FRONTEND-080"
Claude: ✅ Dependency created

You: "FRONTEND-080 depends on BACKEND-070"
Claude: ❌ Error: Circular dependency detected

Prevention is automatic ✅

Team Coordination Strategies

Small Team (2-3 agents)
Medium Team (4-8 agents)
Large Team (9+ agents)

Setup:

Informal coordination
Quick daily check-ins
Shared backlog

Workflow:

Morning:
Each agent: "Start task session"
→ See what others are working on

During day:
Agents pick tasks from shared backlog
Dependencies prevent conflicts

End of day:
Optional: "Show team progress"
→ See what was completed

Coordination time: 5 min/day

Metrics to Track

Velocity

What: Tasks completed per weekWhy: Understand team capacityQuery:

"Show completed tasks this week"

Good velocity:

Solo dev: 8-12 tasks/week
Small team: 20-30 tasks/week
Medium team: 50-80 tasks/week

Estimate Accuracy

What: Actual time vs. estimated timeWhy: Improve future estimatesQuery:

"Show estimate accuracy this month"

Good accuracy:

80-120% (within ±20%)
Consistently low = estimates too conservative
Consistently high = estimates too optimistic

Overdue Rate

What: % of tasks completed after due dateWhy: Identify planning issuesQuery:

"How many tasks were completed late this month?"

Good rate:

Less than 10% overdue
Greater than 20% = deadlines too aggressive or capacity issues

Blocked Tasks

What: Tasks stuck in “blocked” statusWhy: Identify bottlenecksQuery:

"Show blocked tasks"

Good:

Less than 5% of active tasks blocked
All blocked tasks have clear owners

Lead Time

What: Time from task creation → completionWhy: Measure delivery speedQuery:

"Show average lead time this month"

Good lead time:

Small tasks (1-2 hours): Less than 24 hours
Medium tasks (4-6 hours): 1-2 days
Large tasks (8+ hours): 2-5 days

Rework Rate

What: Tasks returned from “in_review” → “in_progress”Why: Quality indicatorQuery:

"How many tasks needed rework this week?"

Good rate:

Less than 15% rework rate
Greater than 30% = quality issues or unclear requirements

What’s Next?

Try a Workflow

Pick one workflow from this guide and try it with your team today

Measure Metrics

Track velocity and estimate accuracy for 2 weeks to establish baseline

Check API Reference

See all available MCP tools for advanced workflows

Need Help?

Getting Started

Setup guide

Support

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Community

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Getting Started

Documentation

Skills

Coordination

Memory

Hooks

Tasks

Help & Security

Production-Tested Workflows

Workflow 1: Daily Development Cycle

Workflow 2: Feature Development (Multi-Agent)

Workflow 3: Bug Fix Sprint

Workflow 4: Release Preparation

Workflow 5: Onboarding New AI Agent

Best Practices

1. Start Every Session with 'Start Task Session'

2. Use Bulk Operations for Planning

3. Let Dependencies Prevent Blocking

4. Track Time to Improve Estimates

5. Use Tags for Filtering

6. Claim Work Based on Capacity

Anti-Patterns (What NOT to Do)

Team Coordination Strategies

Metrics to Track

Velocity

Estimate Accuracy

Overdue Rate

Blocked Tasks

Lead Time

Rework Rate

What’s Next?

Need Help?

Getting Started

Support

Community

Getting Started

Documentation

Skills

Coordination

Memory

Hooks

Tasks

Help & Security

​Production-Tested Workflows

​Workflow 1: Daily Development Cycle

​Workflow 2: Feature Development (Multi-Agent)

​Workflow 3: Bug Fix Sprint

​Workflow 4: Release Preparation

​Workflow 5: Onboarding New AI Agent

​Best Practices

1. Start Every Session with 'Start Task Session'

2. Use Bulk Operations for Planning

3. Let Dependencies Prevent Blocking

4. Track Time to Improve Estimates

5. Use Tags for Filtering

6. Claim Work Based on Capacity

​Anti-Patterns (What NOT to Do)

​Team Coordination Strategies

​Metrics to Track

Velocity

Estimate Accuracy

Overdue Rate

Blocked Tasks

Lead Time

Rework Rate

​What’s Next?

​Need Help?

Getting Started

Support

Community

Production-Tested Workflows

Workflow 1: Daily Development Cycle

Workflow 2: Feature Development (Multi-Agent)

Workflow 3: Bug Fix Sprint

Workflow 4: Release Preparation

Workflow 5: Onboarding New AI Agent

Best Practices

Anti-Patterns (What NOT to Do)

Team Coordination Strategies

Metrics to Track

What’s Next?

Need Help?