Sightdeck AIAgentic Studio

User Guide

Break a big task into an Epic

Some tasks are too big to hand to the agent in one go — they touch several areas or hide a handful of decisions. Here's how to turn one oversized task into a planned Epic and run its subtasks in order.

When to do this

Reach for an Epic when a task lands at a high Story Points value or clearly splits into three or more independent pieces. If you're unsure how the sizing works, read Story points & duration — a high value is the signal to plan rather than start.

Steps

  1. Spot the oversized task. After refinement, a task that is too big for one run has its Plan Epic button highlighted as the recommended action — that's Sightdeck AI suggesting the task is Epic-sized. An Epic is just a parent task that groups smaller subtasks under one goal. Don't worry about the exact number: if the button is highlighted, the task is a candidate. You can plan any task this way, highlighted or not.
  2. Start a planning dialog. Click Plan Epic. A short guided dialog asks a few focused questions about scope and acceptance criteria — you answer, no code is touched yet. The full flow is in Planning mode.
  3. Let it create the subtasks. When the dialog wraps up, Sightdeck AI adds the planned subtasks and links them to the parent. The parent stays in the backlog and now shows an Epic chip such as Epic · 4 tasks — see Epics and subtasks for how parents and subtasks relate. Already have the pieces as separate tasks? Select them and click Merge into Epic instead.
  4. Launch the Epic. Hit Start Epic on the parent. Sightdeck AI runs the open subtasks one after another — you don't start each by hand. They run in the order they are arranged in the Epic; when some of them wait for others, they run in dependency order instead (see Plan a feature with dependencies). The locking rules are covered in Epics and subtasks.
  5. Follow the run and close the Epic. The Epic in the backlog shows which subtask is running and which one runs next, and its chip counts the done subtasks (2 / 4 done). Watch each run in Running tasks. When the last subtask finishes, open the parent and set it to Done to close the Epic.

What you get

  • A big, vague task becomes a set of small, refined subtasks you can reason about.
  • The subtasks run in a defined order, one at a time, instead of one giant unpredictable session.
  • The parent Epic stays as the single place that holds the goal and the progress.
An Epic parent task with its linked subtasks in Sightdeck AI
An Epic groups its subtasks under one parent with an Epic chip.