Expand Tasks with Research v1.0

Expands TaskMaster tasks with research before coding begins. Deterministic operations handled by script.py; AI handles judgment.

Script location: skills/expand-tasks/script.py (relative to plugin root) Part of: prd-taskmaster plugin Depends on: research-expander agent (parallel research worker), any research provider configured via task-master models --set-research or registered as an MCP research tool.

When to Use

Activate when user says: expand tasks, research tasks, research before coding for all, expand subtasks. Do NOT activate for: single task research (use /research-before-coding), PRD generation (use /prd:go).

Native-parallel first (token economy)

Before launching agent waves, check the cheaper path: the native engine expands tasks in parallel for free. Prefer python3 script.py expand, backend op expand (native api), or the expand_tasks MCP tool: it runs structured expand across pending tasks concurrently (inheriting the engine's ThreadPoolExecutor) on economy-tier models / keyless host CLIs and merges atomically. Use THIS skill's agent waves when: no provider/CLI is available, native expand reports failures for specific tasks (rerun just those here), or the research must be repo-grounded (agents can read the codebase; native expand cannot).

Prerequisites

• TaskMaster tasks.json must exist (run /prd:go first)
• A research provider is configured, either (a) task-master models --set-research <model> --<provider> for any task-master provider family, or (b) an MCP research tool registered in ~/.claude.json that Claude Code can call directly (for example mcp__plugin_prd_go__* tools or an external search/reason MCP)
• At least 1 task in tasks.json

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Workflow (5 Steps)

Step 1: Preflight

python3 skills/expand-tasks/script.py read-tasks

Returns JSON: total, expanded, pending_expansion, tasks[].