Tasks and workers

A task is one agent working on one job for you, such as “Fix the flaky login test”. It runs Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode in a folder on your Mac. You start, read and steer tasks in Zero’s window. A task can also start workers: tasks of its own, each taking part of the job.

To open the window, choose Show Zero from the menu bar icon. While that menu is open, ⌘ 0 does the same. The rail runs down its left edge. Next to it, the tasks sidebar lists the tasks in the workspace you’re looking at.

Start a task

1. Click New task at the top of the tasks sidebar, or press ⌘ N. The Home button at the top of the rail opens the same page.
2. In the box that says Do anything, write what you want done. Paste or drop images into it too.
3. Check the chips under the box:
   • The project: the folder the task starts in. Click it to pick another from Projects. Zero lists the folders you added in Settings › Folders › Projects. Until you add a folder, Add a project in Settings › Folders shows in place of the chips. See Workspaces and folders.
   • The workspace: shown only when you have more than one workspace. The task and every worker it starts go into the workspace you pick here. It starts as the workspace you’re looking at.
   • The agent: the model and effort, such as “Opus 5.5 · High”, with the provider’s mark as its icon. Click it to pick a provider from the tabs at the top, a model from the list, and an effort with the Effort slider. With no model picked, the task starts on the provider’s first model. OpenCode starts on the model set in its own config.
   • Permissions: an icon with no label. Point at it to see Permissions: Auto or Permissions: Unrestricted.
4. Click the paper plane, or press ↩. The task starts and opens.

The two permission modes:

Zero keeps what you write on this page as a draft until you send it, and remembers the provider and project you used last. For accounts and models, see Accounts and models.

Find your tasks in the sidebar

The tasks sidebar shows, from the top:

• The workspace’s name. Click it to switch workspace, make one with New workspace…, or open Workspace settings….
• New task and All tasks. All tasks opens the board. See “See every task at once” below.
• Tasks, then a row for each task, with its state icon on the right.
• Earlier: tasks that stopped some time ago and need nothing from you.

Click a row to open the task. ⌘ 1 to ⌘ 9 open the first nine tasks in the order the sidebar shows them.

Rest the pointer on a row for half a second to see a card about the task:

• Its state, and what it’s doing now.
• What it handed over to you, as For you: ….
• Up to three of its open asks, and messages queued for it.
• When it wakes up next, if it has scheduled a check.

Click the card to open the task.

Sort, pause or unarchive

Click the sliders button beside the Tasks heading. Its tip is Sort, pause or unarchive tasks.

The control bar lists the tasks in the same order as the sidebar.

Use a task’s menu

Right-click a task in the sidebar:

A worker’s menu has Rename…, Change status, Pause or Resume, and Archive…. While the worker is working or waiting, it also has Stop.

What a task’s state means

The sidebar and the control bar show each task’s state as an icon. The board and the details pane show it as a pill. A task’s state includes its workers’: when a worker needs you or is in trouble, so does its task.

• Working
• Needs you
• Waiting
• Blocked
• Replied
• Over to you
• Done

When a task is done, waiting or blocked and its agent can’t know, such as when you did the last of it yourself, right-click it in the sidebar and choose Change status, then Done, Waiting or Blocked. A tick marks the state it’s in now. Zero takes your word as it would the agent’s confirmation. A question or approval still open keeps the task at Needs you. When you next write to the task, it’s the agent’s to settle again.

Zero archives done tasks after a while. Choose when in Settings › Agents › Tasks › Archive done tasks: Once you’ve read it, After an hour, After a day, After a week or Never. After a day is the default. An archived done task comes back when something it follows changes.

Read the conversation

A task’s page shows its conversation: your messages, the agent’s answers, and the work in between.

• Steps. Each turn has a heading. It reads Working for 12s while the agent works, then Worked for 2m 37s or Thought for 8s. While the agent works, its latest step shows under the heading. Once its answer starts, the steps fold away.
• Folded steps. What the agent said between steps stays in place. Each run of steps between two of its messages becomes one line, such as “Ran 3 commands, edited 2 files”. A failed step adds a red count, such as “· 1 failed”. Click the line to open those steps, or click the heading to see every step of the turn.
• Commands. Each command shows what it does, in the agent’s words when it gives them, then the command. A running command shows how long it has run, and after a few seconds the last line it printed. A command that fails shows its exit code. Click a command to see it whole with its output, and Copy the output or Copy the command.
• Quiet updates. Turns that Zero started and that needed nothing from you fold into one row. The row says who sent them, such as “Reviewer reported back · nothing needed” or “3 updates · nothing needed”. Click the row to read them.
• Messages from others. A worker’s report, a message from another task, or a note from Zero shows as one line. Click it to read the whole message. Click the sender’s name to open that task.
• Everything the last turn changed. Shows below the last answer while the agent is idle. Open it to see the turn’s changes as a diff.
• Trouble. A task that’s stuck, or that hit its provider’s usage limit, shows a callout at the end. When it’s out of usage, click Continue with Claude Code or Continue with Codex to hand the task, conversation and all, to the other provider.

Zero plays the conversation back in order, the agent’s words at a steady pace. An ask’s card shows once the conversation reaches the step that asked it.

To move around a long conversation, use the ticks down the left edge, one for each of your messages. Point at one to preview it, and click to go there. The down arrow, Go to the latest, takes you to the end.

Point at a message to see a copy button, a ⋯ menu and the time it was sent. The menu has:

Write to a task

Write in the composer at the foot of the page:

Start typing, or press ⌘ V, anywhere on the page, and it goes into the composer without a click. Zero keeps an unsent message as a draft for each task, and puts your words back in the box if a message can’t be sent.

OpenCode takes one message at a time, so you can’t steer it. Its box says OpenCode answers one message at a time.

Edit, drop or send queued messages

Queued messages wait above the composer under Queued. For each one:

• Click it, or its pen, to take it back into the composer. The pen’s tip is Edit in the composer.
• Click its bin to drop it. Its tip is Delete.
• Click Steer to send it now. Its tip is Send it now, mid-turn.

When the agent’s turn ends, Zero sends it the next queued message. Until that message shows in the conversation, it stays in the queue with Next in place of its buttons.

Stopping the agent holds the queue. The heading says Held, and nothing goes out until you click Send beside it or send something new.

Attach files, folders and scratchpads

• Images and videos: paste them, drop them on the composer, or use the + button. Each shows as a pill in your words, such as Image 1 or Video 1, and as a thumbnail above. Click a pill to open the image. A video goes to the agent as up to six stills.
• Other files and folders: click + › Files and folders. Images you pick go with the message. For anything else, Zero puts its path in your message, and the agent reads it from there.
• A scratchpad: click + › Scratchpad, then find and pick one. Zero puts a link to it in your message.

Use / and @

• Type / for Claude Code’s commands and skills, eight at a time. Turn this off in Settings › Composer and inbox › Composer › Suggest skills after /.
• Type @ for your loops. See Later, scratchpads and loops. To also list files from the task’s folder, turn on Settings › Composer and inbox › Composer › Suggest files after @. It’s off by default.

In the suggestions, ↑ and ↓ move, Tab or ↩ takes one, and Esc closes them.

Change the model or permissions

The composer’s chips show the task’s model and permissions.

• The agent chip changes the model and effort from your next message. It also lists the other provider: Claude Code for a Codex task, or Codex for a Claude Code task. Pick one of its models and the task carries on there, with the whole conversation.
• The permissions chip shows Auto or Unrestricted, and changes what the agent can do without asking.

Change either while the agent is working, and the change applies from its next turn. The chip shows a clock, and its tip says From the next turn.

Answer the task’s questions

When a task asks you something, the question shows as a card above the composer and in your inbox. When the composer is empty, press 1 to 9 to pick an answer. See The inbox and asks.

See a task’s details

The details pane floats at the top right of the task’s page. Show or hide it with the sidebar button at the right of the title bar. Its tip reads Show details or Hide details. It’s shown by default.

Follow a task’s workers

A task can hand parts of its job to workers: other agents it starts, each with a conversation of its own. Ask a task for one, such as “Have a worker review the change”.

Upgrade the payments SDK

Update the API calls

Fix the failing tests

Check the webhooks on staging

By default, agents use Zero’s workers rather than their CLI’s own subagents, so you can see, steer and stop every one of them. To let Claude Code and Codex also use their own subagents, turn on Settings › Agents › Tasks › Agents’ own subagents. It applies from each task’s next start.

Workers show in several places:

• In the sidebar, under their task on a dotted branch. To fold them away, click the chevron beside the task. Its tip reads Hide its workers or Show its workers. When a task works through several issues, each issue gets a row of its own, with how long it’s been waiting on you.
• On the task’s page. Click a worker to open its conversation in the task’s page. The sidebar keeps the task selected. Write to the worker as you would to any task.
• In the details pane, under Workers.
• On the board, as “1 worker” or “N workers” under the task’s name.
• In the task’s conversation. When a worker finishes, fails or gets stuck, its report arrives as a line that starts with “Worker”. Click it to read the report.

When a worker needs you or is in trouble, its task shows that state too. The task’s card in the sidebar says so, for example “1 worker needs you”.

A worker that ends its turn while a command it started in the background still runs shows Waiting. Its task hears that it’s waiting on the command, and the worker carries on when the command finishes.

Zero archives a finished worker an hour after its task has its report, so finished workers don’t pile up under a task. A worker that’s waiting, asking or in the middle of its work stays, and so does one with an ask, a follow, a watch or a wake-up still open. Zero doesn’t archive workers when Archive done tasks is Never. A message to an archived worker, from you or its task, brings it back.

Pause, end or resume a task

To pause every task in a workspace, use Pause all tasks in the sliders menu beside the sidebar’s Tasks heading.

When an agent has been idle for three minutes with nothing open, Zero stops it to free memory. You don’t need to resume it by hand: write to it and it starts again. Its box says Message to resume it.

Archive a task

Archive a task to take it out of the sidebar and the board.

1. Choose Archive… from the task’s menu in the sidebar, the ⋯ in the title bar, or the ⋯ on the board.
2. A dialog asks you to confirm, such as Archive “Fix the flaky login test” and its 2 workers?. Click Archive, or press ↩. Cancel or Esc keeps the task.

Archiving stops the task and its workers. To bring one back, click the sliders button beside Tasks › Archived tasks…. Find it with Search and click Unarchive. Its workers come back with it.

Rewind a task

Rewinding takes a task back to before one of your messages: its conversation, the files in its folder, or both.

1. Press Esc twice quickly on the task’s page, or choose Rewind… from the ⋯ menu on one of your messages.
2. In Rewind to, pick the message with ↑ ↓ and ↩.
3. The card says what’s changed in the folder since then, such as “Since this message: 3 files changed, +40 −12.” Choose what to do:

When the conversation goes back, your message returns to the composer, so you can change it and send it again.

When the folder is in a Git repository, Zero keeps a copy of it each time you send a message. When there’s no copy for that message, the card says Zero didn’t keep the folder for this message, so only the conversation can go back. Zero also keeps a copy before it restores the files, so you can rewind the restore too.

See every task at once

Click All tasks in the tasks sidebar. The board lists the workspace’s tasks in two tables:

• Running: agents at work now, the most urgent first.
• Offline: tasks that aren’t running. Each shows the state it was last in. A message resumes it.

Click a row to open the task. Its ⋯ menu, called Actions, has Ask for a status update, Open, End session or Resume, Pause or Resume, Copy task id and Archive…. With Ask for a status update, the agent answers in a few lines and posts where it stands.

Use the agent’s own terminal

Some things only a provider’s own terminal app can do. Click the terminal button in the title bar to swap the conversation for that terminal. The terminal picks up the same conversation. The button’s tip names the provider, such as Open in Codex’s own terminal, for what only it has. The details pane stays beside it.

In the terminal, ⌘ C, ⌘ V and ⌘ A copy, paste and select all. Files you paste or drop go in as their paths. The terminal uses the font from your Ghostty config, when you have one.

To go back, click the button again. Its tip then reads Back to Zero, with what happened in the terminal. A terminal left untouched for 15 minutes closes, and the task comes back to Zero. The terminal won’t open while the agent is working, and Zero’s composer, steering and queue aren’t there while it’s open.