Tasks keyboard shortcut tutorial

What it is

A guided seven-step tour: a welcome card, five practice steps and a completion card. Each practice step names one shortcut, waits for you to press it, then moves on. The five shortcuts are:

1. Enter: create a new task.
2. Tab and Shift+Tab: indent and outdent a task, which builds a hierarchy. These work while you are editing a task's text.
3. Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down: move a task up or down the list (Shift+W and Shift+S do the same with one hand).
4. G: hand a task to an AI agent.
5. ?: open the full shortcuts cheat sheet.

Every key is the one Tasks really uses, so what the tutorial teaches is what works in your list. Keys are shown as plain text, the same way the cheat sheet shows them, for example Alt+Shift+Up. None of the five uses Ctrl or Cmd, so the tutorial never names a key your keyboard might not have; on a Mac, Alt is the Option key.

Where to find it

It is opt-in, with exactly two ways in:

1. The Settings card. Settings > Setup Wizards > Tasks Keyboard Shortcuts > Take Tour. After you have done it the button reads Retake Tour. The card opens Tasks first and then starts the tutorial there. It shows only on the desktop app's main window, and only while Tasks is switched on.
2. A one-time offer after your third task. When saving a task brings you to three saved tasks, a notice asks "Want to learn the essential keyboard shortcuts? Takes under a minute." with Take the tour and Not now. Nothing starts unless you click Take the tour.

There is no other way in: no button in an empty project, no link inside the shortcuts overlay, and no automatic launch.

How it behaves

Practising is safe. While the tutorial runs it takes every key, so nothing you press reaches your list: practising creates, moves, indents and opens nothing. Only the key a step teaches moves it on. Escape and the arrow keys steer the tutorial, and its own buttons keep their keys. A key a step shows without advancing on, such as Shift+Tab beside Tab, does nothing until the tutorial ends.

The agent step is show-only. It moves on when you press Space and never on G, and G does nothing while the tutorial runs, so the tutorial cannot start an agent or spend money.

You can always leave. Press Escape (or use the Skip button) at any step. Finishing or leaving marks the tutorial as done: the Settings card then offers Retake Tour and the one-time offer never comes back.

The offer appears once, ever. It shows when saving a task brings you to your third saved task, whichever button you choose. It does not appear when a project merely opens with three tasks in it, not for blank unsaved rows, not on a phone, not in a popped-out Tasks window, not while another tour is on screen, and not after you have done the tutorial. If your notification settings hide the notice (Presentation Mode, or other notifications turned off), the offer is not used up and can appear later.

Limits. Desktop only: neither the card nor the offer appears on a phone or in a popped-out window, because neither can draw the tutorial. It is an on-screen walkthrough, so there is no command-line equivalent.

For agents

• Tour: id tasks-v2-keyboard, defined in src/renderer/src/features/app-tour/tours/tasks-v2-keyboard.json and registered as a hotkey tour in HOTKEY_ENABLED_TOUR_IDS, so the app holds its hard gate (the real global shortcuts stand down) while it runs, and as a keyboard-owning tour in KEYBOARD_OWNING_TOUR_IDS (both in tour-hotkey.ts), so AppTour.tsx stops every key the tour did not handle itself, except keys aimed at the tour's own buttons and modal card. The delegate step advances on Space only.
• Settings entry: a custom card in SetupAssistantSettings.tsx (anchors setup-wizards-tasks-keyboard-tutorial and setup-wizards-tasks-keyboard-tutorial-launch). The tour id is in SETTINGS_MENU_HIDDEN_TOUR_IDS, so it is not also listed as a plain row.
• Third-task offer: keyboard-tour-offer.ts, called from applyTaskCreateSuccess in tasks-crud-slice.ts, the one place both create paths succeed. It counts saved tasks only (unsaved tmp- rows are ignored), checks the tour store's isActive, the main-window and mobile checks, and shows the notice through notify. It records the offer only when a notice was really shown.
• Remembered state: the internal setting tasksKeyboardTourPromptShown (bookkeeping, no Settings control) and the tour framework's tourCompletions['tasks-v2-keyboard'].
• Strings: one locale patch under resources/locales/patches/ holds every key in every shipped language.
• Specs: tests/unit/features/tasks-v2/keyboard-tutorial-tour.test.tsx (taught keys against the shortcut registry and cheat sheet, and the list of files allowed to start the tour), keyboard-tour-offer.test.ts (the offer, driven by real creates through the real store), tests/unit/features/settings/SetupAssistantSettings.tasks-keyboard.test.tsx (the card), tests/unit/features/app-tour/AppTour.hotkey.test.tsx (each step advancing on its key, every other key being stopped before it reaches a stand-in list, finishing and leaving), and tests/unit/features/app-tour/tour-hotkey.test.ts (which tours own the keyboard).
• Docs: the obligations are in .claude/memory/contracts/tasks-keyboard-tutorial-contract.md; the moving parts are in .claude/memory/tasks-keyboard-tutorial-map.md.

Related

The main Tasks page describes the outliner itself and the Lab gate that currently hides it. The keyboard shortcuts page lists every binding and how to change it. The app tour page covers the tour framework this tutorial runs on. In Tasks, press ? at any time to see every shortcut.