prd-taskmaster

Turn any goal into shipped code.

prd-taskmaster by Atlas AI is an open-source engine for Claude Code that takes a one-line goal, interviews you like a senior PM, writes a graded, placeholder-proof PRD, compiles it into a dependency-ordered task graph, and executes every task with verification evidence — so "done" means proven, not claimed.

Free and MIT, forever.

⚠️ Pre-alpha — under active development. Atlas was recently consolidated into this engine and the newer systems (fleet orchestration, backend abstraction, token economy) have not been fully tested in the wild yet. Expect rough edges and breaking changes between releases, pin a version if you need stability, and please report what breaks. No warranty beyond the MIT license. Atlas Pro is not generally available — it is a private pilot (see below).

Atlas has four structural moats:

• cross-vendor fleet — Claude, Codex, and Gemini run as separate quota pools instead of one brittle model lane.
• Engine-enforced unfakable gates — validate-tasks, evidence checks, and SHIP_CHECK_OK make completion a deterministic state, not a claim.
• persistent vendor-neutral tasks.json — your PRD, task graph, and execution state stay as plain repo files that survive vendor swaps.
• token-economy cost ledger — every orchestrated model call records routing, exit, latency, and escalation so cheap models do cheap work and expensive models justify themselves.

Atlas speaks TaskMaster natively — but doesn't need it. Existing TaskMaster projects get a migration funnel: install task-master-ai only when you want the TaskMaster backend, while the native backend keeps the same validated task graph available without that prerequisite.

Grade: GOOD  ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱  49/57 (86%) · 0 placeholders · 14 tasks parsed

[status: pre-alpha] [License: MIT] [GitHub stars] [works with] [free engine]

How it works

goal → discovery interview → graded PRD → dependency-ordered task graph → verified execution

1. Preflight — detects your environment (native backend, optional TaskMaster backend, model CLIs, research) and configures it. Zero setup questions.
2. Discovery — an adaptive, one-question-at-a-time interview captures your real constraints.
3. Generate — writes a PRD, scores it against deterministic quality checks (letter grade), then parses it into a task graph with complexity scores and full subtask coverage.
4. Handoff — detects what you have installed and recommends one execution mode.
5. Execute — a CDD-gated loop implements each task and proves it with evidence, ending in a deterministic SHIP_CHECK_OK token.

Quickstart

90 seconds to your first run.

Path 1 — one-liner (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://atlas-ai.au/install | bash
# installs the skill + prd_taskmaster package
# TaskMaster install is optional — unlocks the TaskMaster backend

Path 2 — Claude Code plugin

# add the marketplace, then install the plugin
/plugin marketplace add anombyte93/prd-taskmaster
/plugin install prd

# optional — unlocks the TaskMaster backend
npm install -g task-master-ai

First run

Open any project in Claude Code and type:

/prd:atlas      (or /prd:go, or just say: "I want to build …")

Requires Python 3.11+ and Linux / macOS / WSL. The free engine needs no paid API key — it uses the model CLIs you already have; an optional local research proxy can be plugged in (bring your own — not bundled). npm installs run a postinstall step that pip-installs the MCP server's Python deps (non-fatal warning if pip is unavailable).

What "verified" means

Most AI coding tools tell you a task is done. This one makes "done" provable:

• Graded PRDs. Every spec is scored against deterministic checks (EXCELLENT / GOOD / ACCEPTABLE / NEEDS WORK). Placeholders (TBD, {{...}}, TODO — bare or bracketed) are a hard fail: the grade floors to NEEDS WORK and validate-prd exits non-zero.
• A real task graph. Requirements become backend-neutral tasks.json tasks with dependencies, complexity scores, and full subtask coverage — not a flat checklist.
• Evidence-gated execution. Each task is implemented and must produce execution evidence before it counts as done.
• A completion token you can trust. SHIP_CHECK_OK is emitted only when every gate passes — and a single non-zero Exit status in any evidence file blocks it. It is structurally hard to fake. (One escape hatch exists for incident recovery: an explicit admin override flag that is audit-logged and marks the token [OVERRIDE] on stdout — never silent.)

┌─ atlas ── PHASE 3/4: GENERATE ─────────────────────────────┐
│  Grade: GOOD  ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱  49/57 (86%)                      │
│   ✓ 11 checks passed   structure · testability · metrics   │
│   ⚠ 2 warnings   (quoted + located, not just counted)      │
│   ✓ 0 placeholders     (TBD/TODO/{{...}} scan clean)       │
│  Tasks: 14 parsed · 52 subtasks · dependencies mapped      │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Project status

Pre-alpha. The deterministic core — graded PRD validation, the task graph, the ship-check gate, the CLI — is covered by ~300 tests and is the most stable surface. The newer systems around it (cross-vendor fleet, backend abstraction, the token-economy ledger, the bundled Pro MCPs) are recently built and not yet battle-tested; their numbers (e.g. cost savings) are verified-rate estimates, not measured guarantees (see docs/product/MODEL-ECONOMY.md). Expect breaking changes between releases; pin a version for stability. Bug reports and use-case notes are the fastest way to move it toward stable — open an issue.

Built for the token-shortage era

Every job runs on the cheapest model that can do it — and escalates only when a validator says it failed. One setting controls how aggressive that is:

// .atlas-ai/fleet.json
{ "token_economy": "conservative" }   // or "balanced" (default) / "performance"

Task decomposition and research run through the selected backend. Native mode works without a TaskMaster install; installing task-master-ai >= 0.43.0 unlocks TaskMaster's model-agnostic AI (any API you configure — Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity, Gemini, openai-compatible…) and isolated workdir expansion when that backend is selected. Complexity 2 scaffolding gets a haiku-class model; the hardest long-running work gets the frontier model; nothing defaults to expensive. Local telemetry (economy-report) shows your real success-rate and latency per model so the routing gets smarter on YOUR workload — priors and sources in docs/product/MODEL-ECONOMY.md.

Free vs Atlas Pro

Atlas Pro is in private pilot — not generally available and not yet for sale. Pricing is not set. During the pilot, access is granted at our discretion to testers with a strong use case (often free). The table shows what Pro will add; the Pro-only rows are experimental and not fully tested. Want in? Request pilot access → (an on-site signup at atlas-ai.au/pilot to be notified at launch is coming).

The engine is the whole engine — the free tier is not a demo. Pro adds the fleet orchestrator and bundled MCPs (both pilot-stage, not fully tested). Request pilot access →

Atlas Fleet (Atlas Pro)

When a build is big enough to want overnight parallelism, Atlas Fleet lifts the same engine from one session to many. It splits your task graph into dependency waves of file-disjoint chunks, spawns model-agnostic workers (Claude / Codex / Gemini) in isolated git worktrees, collects results through a durable inbox rather than trusting an agent's word, and merges waves sequentially into an integration branch behind a checker gate — never touching main until one final green PR.

It runs entirely on your machine. Your specs and tasks are plain files in your repo, nothing is held hostage. Fleet is pilot-stage and not yet hardened — treat it as a preview.

Request pilot access →

What's open, what's not

Open (MIT, free forever): discovery, PRD validation, the task graph, and solo verified execution — the entire engine in this repo. Read every line.

Closed (Atlas Pro): the atlas-launcher fleet orchestrator and the two bundled MCPs (browser verification, secrets vault). The engine repo will never require a license key.

FAQ

Will the free engine stay free? Yes — MIT, and this repo will never require a key.

What happens if I cancel Pro? Fleet locks again; everything free keeps working. Your specs and tasks are plain files in your repo.

Do I need a paid API key? No. The engine uses the model CLIs you already have (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini); an optional local research proxy can be plugged in (bring your own — not bundled).

Do I need TaskMaster? No. Atlas speaks TaskMaster natively but doesn't require it — Native Mode produces the same validated task graph (validate-tasks + enrich-tasks). Installing task-master-ai >= 0.43.0 unlocks the TaskMaster backend: Mode B auto-execute and native-parallel expansion through TaskMaster's 13-provider model layer.

Which platforms? Linux, macOS, and WSL. (Native Windows is not supported — the atomic state machine uses POSIX file locking.)

Contributing & License

Issues and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Product and UX specifications live in docs/product/.

The engine is MIT licensed and will always be — see LICENSE. Upgrading from v3? See CHANGELOG.md. v3 remains available via git checkout v3.0.0.