Tasks and artifacts
Creating durable work from the composer, and using artifacts for anything you want after the terminal is gone.
The transcript is a view. Tasks and artifacts are the parts that survive it.
Commands
/task
/tasks
/artifact
/artifacts
/export
/tasks and /artifacts list; /task and /artifact act on one. /export
takes work out of Harmony.
Referencing work with #
Summarize what changed in #task-id and write it up as an artifact.
Because tasks and artifacts live in the daemon, a # reference still resolves
tomorrow, from a different client, after a reboot. That is the difference
between "the thing we discussed earlier" and an actual reference.
Tasks are the honest signal
IMPORTANT
A running process is not progress. An agent can print output, hold a session open, and advance nothing. When you want to know whether work is happening, read task state — not the scrollback, not the number of busy-looking panes.
nala tasks list
Artifacts
Artifacts are durable Markdown attached to the work: a plan, a summary, a review, a decision record.
Three properties make them worth using deliberately:
- Durable — they outlive the session that produced them.
- Readable without the agent — a human or a different agent can pick them up.
- Referenceable —
#resolves them later.
Use an artifact for anything you will want after the terminal is gone. A conclusion that exists only in a transcript is a conclusion you will re-derive.
A practical pattern
- Ask for the work.
- Ask for an artifact summarising what changed and why.
- Read the diff yourself.
- Keep the artifact; the transcript can go.
Step 3 is not optional. An artifact is what the agent says it did, which is a different thing from what it did.
Verification gates
Work can carry a verification requirement, so a task does not complete merely because an agent declared it finished. Where a gate exists, the evidence has to exist too.
Where no gate exists, you are the gate. See verification.
Context and compaction
Long sessions fill the context window:
/context
/compact
Artifacts are the right escape valve. Writing a conclusion to an artifact and then compacting keeps the conclusion while reclaiming the budget — compacting alone just loses detail.
TIP
Compact at a natural boundary, such as a finished task, rather than mid-debug. Compaction is lossy by design.
Exporting
/export
WARNING
Exported material carries whatever the work carried — file paths, repository names, and any content the agent handled. Review before sending it anywhere.