Tasks Lists in Claude Code

When you approve a plan and transition into building, Claude Code automatically breaks it into a task list and tracks its own progress through the build. This isn't just a nice-to-have — it's essential for Claude to follow through on every item, especially during long-running builds across multiple files. You can toggle the task list view with Ctrl+T to watch items move from pending to in-progress to completed as Claude works.

But spec-driven development doesn't require a single rigid workflow. This lesson demonstrates two approaches: letting Claude generate tasks from a plan created in plan mode, and bringing your own pre-written spec for Claude to convert into a dependency-aware task list. It also covers an important configuration step — setting up a task list ID in your project's settings.json so that tasks persist from one Claude Code session to the next, meaning you can quit, come back the next day, and pick up exactly where you left off.

What's covered:

• How Claude automatically generates a task list with dependencies from an approved plan
• Toggling the task list view with Ctrl+T to monitor build progress
• Bringing your own spec or PRD and having Claude convert it into a tracked task list
• How Claude creates dependency chains between tasks so work executes in the right order
• Configuring task list persistence with CLAUDE_CODE_TASK_LIST_ID in settings.json
• Where task files are stored on your system (home directory → .claude → tasks)
• Demo of quitting Claude Code and restarting with the task list still intact
• Why you should let Claude generate its own task list rather than micromanaging the breakdown