[Epic]: Human Action Items

Problem or opportunity

PLATE currently has strong machinery for Question work, but it does not yet maintain first-class Task issues for work that requires human intervention such as paperwork, credentials, approvals, or other human checkpoints.

This epic explores how Task issues should be captured and tied to the rest of the project artifact graph so they can later compose with qanda-style guidance. The longer-term direction is to let a user ask, "I have half an hour to work on this, what's the most valuable thing I can do?" and have PLATE prioritize both Question and Task work appropriately.

For this epic, the immediate goal is narrower: capture Task tickets and define how they relate to other PLATE artifacts in the same spirit that Epic #218 did for Question work.

GitHub Milestones are the canonical Epic container. This issue remains a stub and active planning surface.

Epic milestone: Human Action Items

Desired outcome: PLATE sessions can create first-class Task issues for work that requires human intervention, with explicit user-requested task creation as the first must-land slice.

Scope and boundaries:

In scope:

• The system can create a Task.
• The user can explicitly request that a Task be created.
• The system can identify a blocker that requires human intervention and create a Task.

Out of scope:

• Autonomously assigning tasks to humans.
• Estimating the level of effort for a task.
• Providing guaranteed-correct instructions for a task (best effort is acceptable).
• Prioritizing tasks.
• Surfacing tasks in the CLI via a specialized interactive chat.

Success criteria:

• A PLATE session can create a Task issue when a human-action blocker is identified.
• Credential or access blockers with no safe workaround can produce a Task issue that explains what the human must do.
• New-project onboarding can create Task issues for prerequisites such as PAT setup.
• A user can explicitly ask PLATE to create a Task issue and PLATE creates it.
• PLATE can infer certain human-action needs from conversational context and create a Task issue proactively.
• Task is represented as a first-class PLATE issue type.
• The repository shows system-created Task issues whose required actions are unambiguously human-only.

Expected child features:

• #358 — Design: define Task as a first-class issue type plus template/label/linking semantics.
• #359 — Feature: support explicit Task creation in PLATE sessions.
• #360 — Feature: create Task issues for detected human-only blockers.

Risks, assumptions, and dependencies:

• A first-class Task label and issue template will be needed.
• Task artifact-linking logic should remain aligned with existing PLATE linking logic.

PLATE epic readiness

• This issue has or will be assigned to its GitHub milestone.
• Child features can be decomposed into testable issues.
• Success criteria are observable or auditable.

Read child issues #358, #359, and #360 first, then review the existing PLATE artifact-linking logic referenced in the epic. The work is complete when the agreed child features are implemented and PLATE sessions can create first-class Task issues for clearly human-only actions.