Using the AI Chat to Manage Your Board and Inbox

What is the AI Chat?

The AI Chat is your built-in AI assistant that can read and act on your boards, tasks, inbox, and projects — all through natural language. Instead of clicking through menus and task lists, just tell the AI what you need.

It has full access to the same tools as the Hypertask MCP server — meaning it can create tasks, move them between boards, add comments, manage your inbox, and much more.

How to Open the AI Chat

You have two ways to open it:

• Ctrl+Shift+? (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+? (Mac) — open the AI Chat
• Ctrl+Shift+O (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+O (Mac) — start a new AI Chat session

The chat opens as a sidebar panel so you can keep working on your board while talking to the AI.

What Can the AI Chat Do?

The AI Chat has full board and inbox access. Here are some examples of what you can ask:

Inbox Management

• "Triage my inbox — categorize everything and archive the noise"
• "What’s new in my inbox since yesterday?"
• "Archive all inbox items older than a week"

Task Management

• "Find all tasks with no assignee and assign them to me"
• "Move everything in Backlog that’s marked High priority to In Progress"
• "What tasks haven’t been updated in 2 weeks? Flag them as stale"
• "Create a task for the homepage redesign on the Sprint board"

Comments & Updates

• "Add a comment to every overdue task asking for a status update"
• "Summarize what happened on this board in the last 7 days"

Board Overview

• "How many tasks are in each column right now?"
• "Show me all urgent tasks across all my projects"
• "Who has the most tasks assigned to them?"

Things that used to take an hour of clicking around — done in seconds.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of AI Chat

• Be specific — the more context you give, the better the results. Say "on the Marketing board" instead of just "on the board"
• Chain actions — you can ask for multiple things in one message, like "find all overdue tasks, add a comment asking for status, and move them to a Review column"
• Start fresh when needed — use Ctrl+Shift+O / Cmd+Shift+O to start a new session if the conversation gets long
• Use it for reporting — ask for summaries, stats, and overviews to get a quick pulse on your projects

AI Chat vs. MCP Server

Both the AI Chat and the MCP server give AI access to the same set of tools. The difference is where you use them:

• AI Chat — built right into Hypertask. Open it with a keyboard shortcut and start talking. No setup needed.
• MCP Server — connects external AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, etc.) to your Hypertask boards. Requires a one-time token setup.

Use the AI Chat for quick queries and board management. Use MCP when you want your coding AI agent to track and manage tasks as part of your development workflow.