Tags
Tags group related work and knowledge by topic. One set of tags is shared across a project's tasks, briefs, automations, artifacts and memories, so a tag like billing pulls together the open work, the decisions and the runbooks about billing in one place. The Tags page is where you keep that set tidy, so it doesn't drift into near-duplicates like auth, authentication and login-auth.
You'll find it under Knowledge → Tags in the project sidebar.
Topics and Provenance
Tags come in two kinds, and the Tags page switches between them:
- Topics are what the work is about:
billing,onboarding,search. These are the tags people and agents choose, and the ones worth curating. - Provenance tags are system labels that record how an item was created (such as a task written up from a commit). You don't need to manage these by hand.
Browse your tags
The Tags page has two tabs.
Vocabulary lists every tag in the project, with a count. For each tag you see:
- its name, and a description if someone has written one
- Curated if a person has renamed or described it, or Auto if nobody has reviewed it yet
- Only on closed work when every use is on finished or dismissed items, and Unused when nothing carries it
- how many live and closed things carry it, broken down into tasks, automations, artifacts and memories
Use Search tags… to find one, and sort by Most used, Least used, A–Z or Needs review. Needs review puts tags nobody has reviewed first, and the page tells you how many there are. Press Show details on a tag to see everything that carries it, grouped into briefs, tasks, automations, artifacts and memories, with a link to each.
Untagged lists the tasks, automations, artifacts and memories that carry no tag at all, with a link to each, so you can see what isn't grouped anywhere yet.
Rename or describe a tag
Open a tag with Show details, then press Rename or describe (or Rename or edit description if it already has one). Change its name, add a description under What this tag means, and press Save.
Renaming updates the tag everywhere it's used. If the new name matches a tag that already exists, DevSpec tells you, and you can merge the two instead. A description helps the next person, and the next agent choosing between two similar tags, know when to use it. Saving either change marks the tag Curated.
Merge near-duplicate tags
When two or more tags mean the same thing, merge them:
- On the Vocabulary tab, tick the tags you want to combine.
- Choose the one to keep from the menu.
- Press Merge N into it and confirm.
The other tags are retired, and everything that carried them now carries the one you kept. Something that already had both ends up with one tag, not two. Select the tags to combine from the current page of the vocabulary. A merge can't be undone, so check your choice before you confirm.
Retire a tag
To remove a tag that isn't a real topic, open it with Show details and press Retire. DevSpec asks you to confirm, and says how many things will lose the tag. Retiring removes the tag from everything that carries it and drops it from the vocabulary. Nothing else about those items changes.
If the tag is a real topic spelled another way, merge it into the right tag instead: a merge keeps the assignments, while retiring removes them.
Who can manage tags
| Role | See tags | Rename and describe | Retire and merge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maintainer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Contributor | Yes | Yes | No |
| Reviewed Contributor | Yes | No | No |
| Viewer | Yes | No | No |
Retiring and merging change how everything in the project is grouped, so they're for Maintainers. See Organizations, members and roles.
How tags get assigned
Tags reach your work in several ways:
- People add tags when they create or edit a task, automation or artifact.
- Dev and your agents tag what they record, including tasks, memories and artifacts, and DevSpec automatically applies matching tags from your existing project vocabulary when new work is created.
- Background tagging and vocabulary cleanup periodically tag untagged records using your existing vocabulary and merge obvious synonyms so the tag list stays consistent without manual upkeep.
Background tagging and vocabulary cleanup are charged to your organization's balance as Running your project and pause when paid project work is paused. See Billing, usage and limits.