Creating Tasks — Obvious Help Center

This guide walks you through building a reusable workflow task — naming it, defining steps, picking an agent mode, saving it, and running it whenever you need. By the end, you'll have a working task ready to go on demand or on a schedule.

Tasks are like saved recipes — you define a series of steps once, and Obvious follows them every time. Each step is an instruction: update a sheet, send a message, check data quality, or anything else your workflow needs.

Prerequisites

You need Editor access to your project to create tasks. If you're not sure what access level you have, open Settings → Members to check.

The quickest way: ask the agent

Tell the agent what you want the task to do, and it handles the rest.

Create a task that runs a data quality check on my sales sheet every Monday at 9am

The agent builds the task — names it, defines the steps, and saves it. You can review and edit from there.

This works for any task you can describe: "Create a task that sends a weekly summary to Slack," "Set up a task that archives completed projects every Friday," or anything else your workflow needs. The more specific your prompt, the better the result.

To build one manually

If you prefer to set things up yourself — or want to understand how tasks work — here's the step-by-step.

Step 1: Open the task creator

In any project, type / in the chat input to open the slash menu. Select New task from the menu.

A modal appears titled Create Task.

Step 2: Name your task

In the Name field, enter a clear, action-oriented name.

The name is what you'll see every time you run or manage the task, so make it specific enough that you'll remember what it does six months from now.

Step 3: Add a description (optional)

In the Description field, explain why this task exists and when you'd run it.

This is for you and your team. A good description might be: "Validates customer data every morning at 9am and flags records with missing emails." This context helps if someone else on your team needs to understand or modify the task later.

Step 4: Define your steps

Click + Add step to start building your workflow.

Each step is one action. If you're creating a task that validates data, imports a file, and sends a notification, that's three steps — not one.

For each step:

Enter the step description. Write what Obvious should do: "Check for duplicate emails in the customer sheet," "Update the status field to 'processed,'" "Send a Slack message to #data-team."
Click + Add step to add the next step.
Drag steps up or down to reorder them.
Click the × icon next to a step to remove it.

Think of each step as an instruction you'd give to a colleague. Be specific about what should happen — Obvious handles the how.

Step 5: Choose an agent mode

Use the Mode dropdown to pick which agent runs your task. Each mode has different strengths:

Auto — The default. Balances speed and depth for most workflows. If you're not sure which to pick, start here.
Fast — Optimized for quick, straightforward tasks. Finishes faster. Good for simple data updates, formatting, or lookups.
Deep Work — Takes more time to reason through complex problems. Good for multi-step analysis, research, or anything that benefits from deeper thinking.
Analyst — Tuned for data-heavy work. Good for statistical analysis, trend detection, and reporting tasks.

If you don't select a mode, Obvious uses Auto by default.

Tip: You can change the mode anytime by editing the task later. Start with Auto and switch to a specialized mode if the task needs it.

Step 6: Review your task

Before saving, check that:

The name clearly describes what the task does
Each step is one action, not multiple
Steps are in the right order
No steps are blank (empty steps block saving)

Step 7: Save the task

Click Create task.

Your task now appears in your project's task list and is ready to run.

If you're editing an existing task, this button shows Save changes instead.

Step gates

Gates let you pause a step until a condition is met before execution continues. Without a gate, each step runs immediately after the previous one finishes. With a gate, the step waits.

You add a gate when configuring a step. Gates are optional — most steps don't need one.

Gate types

Approval — The step waits for one or more people to approve it before continuing. You specify who needs to approve. Obvious notifies them, and the step only proceeds once they give the go-ahead. Use this when a step involves an action a human should sign off on before it runs.

Auto-condition — Obvious evaluates a condition you define. If the condition passes, the step continues automatically. If it fails, the step is blocked. No human required — the gate either opens or it doesn't based on the result. Use this when you want the task to self-check before moving forward.

Timeout — The step waits for a number of minutes you specify, then continues automatically regardless of anything else. Use this when you need a deliberate pause built into your workflow — for example, giving a downstream system time to process before the next step runs.

What happens when a gate is rejected

If an approval gate is rejected — or an auto-condition gate fails — you choose what Obvious does next:

Retry — Runs the same step again from the start.
Abort — Stops the entire task run immediately.
Route to step — Jumps to a different step you specify instead of continuing in sequence. Useful for branching logic: "if this check fails, go to the cleanup step instead."

Paused runs

When a run is waiting on a gate, it shows a status of Paused in your run history. Approval gates stay paused until someone approves or rejects. Timeout gates stay paused until the wait elapses. Other task runs are unaffected — a paused run doesn't block anything else in your project.

Running your task

There are two ways to run a task:

From the Tasks drawer: Open the Tasks drawer in your project sidebar, find your task, click the ⋯ menu, and select Run now. Obvious creates a new thread and executes each step in order.
From chat: Type / in the chat input and select your task from the list. Obvious runs it in your current thread.

You'll see the progress right in chat — which steps completed, which are running, and whether any hit issues. This is a good time to verify the task does what you expected.

What to do if this didn't work

The task won't save. Make sure every step has a description. Empty steps block saving.

The task saved but didn't run as expected. Tasks depend on the current state of your data and project. If a step references a sheet that doesn't exist or a field that was renamed, the step will fail. Edit the task and update your steps.

A run is stuck on Paused. A step is waiting on an approval gate. Open the run from your run history and check who needs to approve — or reject the gate to trigger the configured fallback behavior.

You want to edit the task after saving. Open the Tasks drawer, find your task, and click the ⋯ menu to select Edit. The task opens in a drawer where you can modify steps, then click Save changes.

You want to delete the task. Open the task from the Tasks drawer ⋯ menu, select Delete, and confirm.

Still stuck? Email help@obvious.ai and include the task name and what you expected to happen.