Plan with AI
Route: /org/tasks?ai=plan · Permission: Plan with AI (plus Create Tasks to apply; Manage Milestones to create phases)
Module: Task Management · Entry points: Tasks toolbar → Plan with AI · Project → Roadmap → Plan phases with AI · header + → AI plan · task detail → Subtasks → Suggest sub-tasks
What this is. A drawer that turns a requirement into a tree of phases, tasks and sub-tasks you can review, edit and create in one go. What it is for. Starting a project or a feature from a document instead of typing forty tasks by hand. The problem it solves. The first hour of every project is spent decomposing a brief; the AI drafts that decomposition, you correct it, and nothing is created until you say so.
1. What Plan with AI is
Paste a requirement, drop a file, or pick an Orbit Papers document. The AI first writes an outline of epics (with a suggested phase or sprint for each), then expands every epic into tasks and sub-tasks — any depth — with an estimate in hours, a priority and type taken from your project's configuration, dependencies between sibling tasks, and an assignee hint based on who has capacity.
The result opens in a tree review. Nothing exists in the project until you press Create N tasks, and then the whole hierarchy is created together: if any single task cannot be created, none are.
| Plan with AI | Creating a task | Jira sync | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | A requirement (text, PDF, Word, Markdown, text file, Papers document) | A form | An existing Jira project |
| Output | A whole hierarchy, reviewed first | One task | Imported tasks, categories, sub-tasks |
| Uses AI credits | Yes (once per generation) | No | No |
.docx and .md files are read from their text — no OCR, no credits for the reading step. Scanned
PDFs fall back to vision OCR, which does spend credits.
2. How a plan becomes tasks
Long documents are digested section by section. Up to 12 epics are expanded in one run; any beyond that appear in the tree flagged needs expansion so you can add their tasks by hand or generate again with narrower guidance.
3. Planning — step by step
Step 1 · Choose a source
| Source | What to do | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Paste | Paste the requirement, brief, PRD or meeting notes | Any length; long text is digested |
| Upload | Drop a .pdf, .docx, .md or .txt (up to 10 MB) | Word and Markdown are read as text |
| Orbit Papers | Pick a document from the project | Shown only when you can view Papers documents |
Step 2 · Add guidance and options
- Guidance — optional steering: two-week sprints, add QA tasks under every feature, ignore the appendix.
- Max depth — 2, 3 or 4 levels.
- Sprint length — 7, 14 or 21 days, used for the suggested phases.
- Also create phases/sprints — on by default from the Roadmap; greyed out unless you can manage milestones.
The ? in the drawer header opens the utility's guide with a worked example and the credit cost.
Step 3 · Generate
Press Generate. The stage indicator shows what the AI is doing; a typical brief takes one to three minutes. If your organisation is short of credits the button is replaced by a message naming the needed and available amount.
Step 4 · Review the tree
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Include checkbox | Unticking a node unticks its whole subtree; the totals update |
| Title | Click to edit in place |
| h | Estimate in hours |
| Type / Priority | Your project's own values — the AI can only pick from these |
| Milestone | A suggested phase from the plan or an existing milestone |
| Assignee | Project members; the AI's hint shows its reason |
| after: … chips | Dependencies between siblings; remove with × |
| + / ⋯ | Add a child, delete a node and its children, move up or down |
| Footer | Task count, total hours and hours per assignee |
Step 5 · Create
Press Create N tasks, confirm, and the hierarchy is created. The task list refreshes; created tasks carry the AI badge. Each assignee receives one notification for the batch rather than one per task.
A generated plan you closed without applying is kept. Use Reopen a plan you generated earlier in the drawer header to return to it.
Suggest sub-tasks for one task
Open a task → Subtasks → Suggest sub-tasks. The same review opens, but the AI is given the task, its parents and the sub-tasks that already exist, so proposals never duplicate what is there. Applying creates the proposals under that task.
4. Field reference
| Field | Control | Required | Validation / source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | Segmented: Paste · Upload · Orbit Papers | Yes | Upload: .pdf .docx .md .txt, ≤ 10 MB |
| Requirement | Text area | Yes (Paste) | Empty text is refused |
| Guidance | Text area | No | Free text |
| Max depth | Select | No | 2 / 3 / 4, default 3 |
| Sprint length | Select | No | 7 / 14 / 21 days |
| Also create phases/sprints | Toggle | No | Needs Manage Milestones |
| Node title | Inline text | Yes | Non-empty |
| Estimate | Number | No | Hours, decimals allowed |
| Type / Priority | Select | Yes | Project task configuration |
| Milestone | Select | No | Plan milestones + project milestones |
| Assignee | Select | No | Active project members only |
5. The admin contract
- Permissions: Plan with AI to open the drawer and generate; Create Tasks to apply; Manage Milestones to create phases.
- Credits: about 2,000 per work-breakdown run (ceiling 12,000 for long documents); about 400 per sub-task suggestion. The organisation's AI switch, the per-utility switch and the monthly limit all apply.
- Utilities (Super Admin → AI Utilities, category Orbit Ops): Work breakdown from requirement, Suggest sub-tasks. Their prompts are personas an operator can edit without a release.
6. Downstream
- Created tasks behave exactly like hand-made ones: board, list, table, timelines, time logs, reports.
- Dependencies appear on the task's Dependencies section and on the Roadmap.
- The AI badge and the plan reference stay on the task for audit.
7. Don't confuse this with…
- Jira sync — imports an existing hierarchy; it does not invent one.
- Creating a task — one task, no AI.
- Risk radar — reads the work you already have; it does not create work (its split intervention opens this drawer for one task).
8. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "AI is disabled for your organisation" | The organisation's AI switch or this utility is off | Settings → AI Utilities |
| Generate replaced by a credits message | Not enough credits for the estimated cost | Top up, or generate from a shorter requirement |
| An epic shows needs expansion | More than 12 epics, or one expansion failed | Add its tasks by hand or generate again with guidance that narrows the scope |
| "Could not read this Word document" | The file is not a real .docx | Save it again from Word, or paste the text |
| Nothing created, error shown | One node could not be created (for example an assignee left the project) | Fix the node and apply again — the transaction rolled back, nothing partial exists |