Assigning a task to an AI agent, without losing the plot
By Alejandro Rioja
Most to-do apps assume every task gets done by the person who wrote it down. That assumption is quietly wrong now. A lot of the work on your list — drafting, researching, triaging, summarizing — is work an AI agent can do, if you can hand it over cleanly and get it back in a form you trust.
Done treats that hand-over as a first-class action. Every task has an assignee, and one of the choices is an AI agent. Assign it, and whichever model you've connected — Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible client — picks it up from its queue, does the work, and reports back into that task's own activity feed.
Delegation, not a black box
The point isn't to fire a task into the void and hope. When you assign work to an agent, you stay the owner. The agent comments as it goes, and its results land where the task already lives — next to the notes, the due date, and the subtasks. You review it in the same place you'd review your own work.
- Capture in plain language — dates, priority, project, and the @agent handle parse out of one line.
- The agent claims the task, works it, and posts progress and a result as comments.
- You approve the result (or send it back with feedback) — the task only closes when you say so.
Why it stays calm
Because the agent works from a queue you control, nothing runs away. Recurring and dependency rules keep it from jumping ahead of blocked work, run budgets cap how far a session goes, and the approval gate means a task you care about can't close itself. You get the leverage of delegation without the anxiety of losing track.
Frequently asked questions
How do I assign a task to an AI agent in Done?
Set the task's assignee to an AI agent, or add @agent in Quick add. A connected agent then claims it from its queue, works it, and reports back into the task's activity feed.
Do I stay in control after assigning to an agent?
Yes. You remain the owner, the agent comments its progress, and gated tasks can't close without your approval. Delegation in Done is not a hand-off you lose visibility into.