Issues are durable units of work. Status decides where an issue appears and what it communicates, so moving an issue is how you tell the workspace what is happening. Projects give related issues a home, a lead, and dates, but progress lives in the issues, not the project row. Open Bright →

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The issue lifecycle

  1. Capture the outcome and the context needed to check it.
  2. Set properties: project, assignee, priority, effort, labels, due date, visibility.
  3. Plan the issue in chat when the work needs decomposition or research.
  4. Add sub-issues when outputs need independent ownership or status.
  5. Build once scope and destination are clear.
  6. Move the issue through the active states as work changes: Triage, Backlog, Planned, In progress, Review.
  7. Complete it after verifying the expected outcome, or set it to Cancelled.
An issue and a project both close as Done. The vocabularies still differ: an issue can also be Triage or Review; a project cannot.

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How the views treat status

  • What’s next lines up what to pick up right now: Review first, then In progress, then Planned, closest to done leading.
  • Issues shows everything committed, Planned through Done and Cancelled. Closed work drops off two weeks after its last touch.
  • Sub-issues fold into their parent’s row unless you turn on Show sub-issues. One whose parent is filtered out keeps its own row.
  • To see the breakdown, open a parent and read its Sub-issues section, shown as a count such as 0/3.
The full property and view reference lives in Issues.

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Projects and labels

Use a project for a bounded initiative with a lead and dates. Use labels for classification that cuts across projects: function, risk, platform, customer segment. A project moves through its own status list; see Projects for the current set. Issues carry the day-to-day state, so you usually read progress from the issues, not the project row.

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Tips

  • Write the definition of done into the issue at capture time. Loop Engineering explains why it matters.
  • Read progress from the issues, not the project row.

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Good to know

  • The active states are Triage, Backlog, Planned, In progress, and Review. An issue closes as Done or Cancelled.
  • Both an issue and a project close as Done. Only an issue can be Triage or Review.
  • Closed work drops off the Issues view two weeks after its last touch.
  • Sub-issues fold into the parent row unless Show sub-issues is on. The parent shows a count such as 0/3.
  • A project has its own status list. Projects has the current set.

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Next step

Store the plans and decisions behind the work in Documents.