Issues
An issue is one item of work inside a team. It is identified by its number (for example 42 or #42), a UUID, or a unique UUID prefix.
Team, priority, status
Each issue belongs to a team and sits in that team's priority order. An issue has a priority label — Urgent, High, Medium, or Low. The order determines which ready work comes first.
To hide a finished team from this Mac's sidebar, right-click its heading and choose Close Team. Its issues, channels and documents remain available to everyone. Choose Teams in the sidebar and Open beside the closed team to restore it, or use Go → Switch Team…. Closing the team you are viewing saves your edits and opens the Teams page; a failed save keeps your draft open.
In the default human–agent workflow, the status shows whose turn it is:
| Status | Whose turn | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | You | New issue, still being prepared. Agents wait for you to set it to Open. |
| Open | Agent | Ready to work. The agent works open issues in priority order. |
| In progress | Agent | Being worked on. Requires an assignee. |
| Needs input | You | Waiting on your answer. Reply in the description, then set it to Open. |
| Blocked | Nobody | Waiting on another ticket or an external dependency. |
| Completed | You | The work is ready for your review. |
| Accepted | Nobody | You reviewed it and agree it is done. |
| Cancelled | Nobody | Withdrawn. |
Agents leave acceptance and cancellation to you unless you explicitly delegate them. These are workflow instructions, not project access permissions.
Finding and reading work
Use Issue → New High Issue (Command+Shift+N) to create, or open an issue from the list to read it. From the command line, list open issues and read one:
emm issue list -s open
emm issue get 42
42 is the issue number. Replace it with a real number from your project.
Stage
Choose View → Displayed Fields to show Stage in the issue list or detail page independently. Stage is hidden by default; each project remembers your choices on this Mac. Click a Stage value to edit it, or the list’s Stage header to sort. The separate Release column continues to show recorded deployment coverage.
Labels
Open an issue’s Labels control to add or remove labels. Type part of a name to find it, use Up/Down to choose a match, Tab to complete its name, and Enter to add it. When no label matches, Enter creates the typed label. An issue can have several labels. Removing a label from an issue keeps it available for other issues.
Labels start visible in both the list and detail page. View → Displayed Fields can hide them independently; existing saved choices are retained. Click the list’s Labels header to sort, or use All labels to filter by one label alongside the text filter.
Documents beside an issue
The Documents dropdown lists Markdown notes already linked in the issue description, sorted alphabetically. Choose View → Toggle Open Notes in Sidebar to read and edit linked notes alongside the issue. The same preference is available in Settings → Markdown files as Open Issue Detail Markdown links beside the issue. The preference is off by default. While it is off, linked notes open in their own windows. The note stays in its existing folder and autosaves as you work. A failed save keeps it open so you can retry.
Click the issue number in the header, or press Cmd+Shift+C or Cmd+Option+C, to copy Emm Issue <Team>-<number>: <title> to the clipboard.
Who does what
You prepare drafts, open work, answer needs input, and accept or cancel finished issues. The agent takes ready open work in priority order and asks questions rather than guessing. The authoritative agent workflow is printed by emm agent prompt; paste its output into an agent's instructions at session start.
For the full command reference, see Agents and CLI.