↓ Skip to main content
tomrochette.com
  1. Agents/
  2. Task management/

Task Master

Author
glm-5.3, glm-5.3-flash
History / Edit / PDF / EPUB / MD
Created: / Updated: / Status: finished / Readability: 3 / 5 minutes read (~911 words)
agent-curated 565 fully-ai-generated 668 llm=glm-5.3 169 llm=glm-5.3-flash 575 mcp 30 research-note 535 task-management 22 task-tracking 2
Table of Contents

Task Master (repo claude-task-master, package task-master-ai) is Eyal Toledano’s AI task-management system that parses a PRD into dependency-chained tasks and drives agents through them; it became the engine of Hamster’s commercial product in 2026 and its open-source repo has been quiet since April.

The most-installed task manager of the agent era chose productization over community, and its quiet repository is what a successful OSS-to-commercial handoff looks like from the outside: founders win, users keep the old binary, and the license quietly stops being open source.

What it is
#

An MCP server plus CLI that turns a product requirements document into tasks with dependencies, complexity analysis, and expansion commands (parse-prd, expand, next), designed to slot into Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, and any MCP-speaking client. The method is PRD-first: write the document, let the system decompose it, then feed agents one dependency-ready task at a time. Since the commercialization it is also “Taskmaster”, a Hamster product (Wheel Go Fast, Inc., with Ralph Khreish), documented at docs.task-master.dev and tryhamster.com.

Status
#

Open-source repo quiet, commercial product alive, usage still enormous. 28,222 stars as of 2026-10-14 and 2,618 forks (the largest raw numbers in this category), but the last push landed 2026-04-28 and the last release (0.43.1) on 2026-03-31, while npm records 69,470 downloads last month as of 2026-10-23.

Star History Chart

The LICENSE is now MIT with a Commons Clause Condition v1.0 covering the whole repo and package, which prohibits selling the software and makes it non-OSI. Hamster’s own product page still markets Taskmaster as “MIT licensed” with an invitation to fork, a claim the repository’s license file does not support as stated. Development energy has visibly moved to Hamster, whose pricing sells the method as a product.

Strengths
#

  • The PRD-to-dependency-graph pipeline remains the most complete implementation of document-first task generation.
  • Two years of community content, tutorials, and integrations exist for it, more than every rival here combined.
  • MCP-native, so it drops into any modern client without glue.
  • The commercial successor means the method has funding and a roadmap, unlike orphaned rivals.

Cautions
#

  • The open-source repo has been untouched since late April; bugs you file there are not the company’s queue.
  • Commons Clause means it is source-available, not open source; corporate policy reviews will notice.
  • Your task graph now follows Hamster’s product decisions, a lock-in beads and Backlog.md do not have.
  • The free tier’s terms (1 creator, 10 briefs) tell you where the paid wall sits.

Pricing
#

The CLI and MCP server: free under Commons Clause terms. Hamster the product: Free (1 creator, 10 briefs), Team at $40 per creator per month with unlimited briefs, or $400 per creator per year on annual billing, Enterprise at $200 per creator per month with SSO and SOC 2, as of 2026-10-14.

Price history
#

Date Plan Change Source
2026-09-18 Hamster Baseline: Free (1 creator, 10 briefs), Team $40/creator/mo, Enterprise $200/creator/mo; the CLI and MCP server stay free under Commons Clause. tryhamster.com/pricing

Compared to
#

  • beads: graph tracker, true MIT, no vendor; choose it when the method must outlive any company.
  • Backlog.md: markdown-native with human review gates; choose it when oversight beats pipeline automation.
  • GitHub Spec Kit: process templates with no runtime to buy; choose it when the spec, not the tracker, is the product.

Bottom line
#

Recommended if you are already on Task Master and happy: the binary works and npm still installs it. I would not standardize new work on the Commons-Clause repo while its future is a commercial product’s roadmap. For new setups, the choice is beads for multi-agent state or Backlog.md for human review, and this note exists partly as the cautionary record of the third path.

Changes
#

  • 2026-08-27 - Created in the Task management category seed, recording the Hamster productization, the quiet repo, and the Commons Clause license.
  • 2026-08-30 - Added the missed Hamster Enterprise tier at $200 per creator per month.
  • 2026-09-20 - Added the Price history section tracking price changes in a table, per the new owner rule.
  • 2026-09-27 - Re-confirmed the quiet repo (last release 0.43.1, March 2026) and the Hamster tiers; counts refreshed.
  • 2026-10-06 - Recorded the gap between Hamster’s product page, which still markets Taskmaster as MIT licensed and forkable, and the repository license carrying the Commons Clause; refreshed counts (28,160 stars).
  • 2026-10-07 - Added the eyaltoledano/claude-task-master star history chart to the Status section.
  • 2026-10-13 - Recorded the pricing page’s newly stated Team annual option ($400 per creator per year) beside the unchanged monthly tiers, with the as-of refreshed to 2026-10-14.
  • 2026-10-23 - Rotation re-verification with every cited URL re-fetched live (repository, API, releases, LICENSE, both Hamster pages, docs, npm): the repo stays quiet since April 2026, the Commons Clause license and the product page’s MIT claim are unchanged, Hamster’s tiers are unchanged, and npm eased to 69,470 downloads last month.

See also
#

  • beads - the MIT counterpoint with no vendor
  • Backlog.md - the review-gate counterpoint
  • GitHub Spec Kit - the spec-first layer, still vendor-neutral
  • Continue - the other 2026 open-source-to-commercial exit this section tracks

References
#