Tasks
The prioritised board RankX AI builds from everything it finds. How tasks are created, why they are deduplicated, and what a task carries with it.
Tasks is where findings become work. Audit issues, AI Readiness findings, visibility gaps and traffic movements all produce candidates for the board, and the board orders them by opportunity rather than by category, so the top of the list is the thing worth doing rather than the first thing found.
What a task carries
A task is not a one-line note. It carries a structured body:
- What the problem is.
- Why it matters, which is the part that survives being read by someone who was not in the room when it was found.
- The steps, numbered.
- A definition of done, so "finished" is checkable rather than a feeling.
- What it affects: the pages, where those are known.
Affected pages, in three states
The affected-page list has three states rather than two, and the distinction is the same one that runs through the whole product:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Listed | Real per-page rows were recorded, and they are named |
| Site-wide | The finding is about the site, so there is no page list to have |
| Not recorded | The finding has a page count but the per-page detail was not captured |
An empty list rendered for all three would tell you your site is clean where RankX AI simply did not record the detail. Some checks report a count of affected pages and link no page rows at all, which is exactly the ambiguity this distinction removes.
Deduplication
Tasks created from a source carry that source with them, and if an open task already tracks the same source, that task is returned rather than a copy being made.
That matters most when work is driven from an assistant: running the same analysis twice produces one board, not two. It also means a finding that keeps recurring across audits accumulates on one task rather than fragmenting.
A task survives its source
When a task is created, it takes a copy of what it was created from rather than a reference to it.
So a task outlives the audit that produced it. Superseding an audit with a newer crawl does not empty your board, and deleting a finding does not silently rewrite the task describing it. What you agreed to do stays what you agreed to do.
Where tasks come from
| Source | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Website Audit | Technical issues, with their affected pages |
| AI Readiness | Findings about whether assistants can reach, read and understand your site |
| Traffic | Movements worth investigating |
| AI Shopping | Product visibility findings |
| You | Anything you add yourself, from the board or over MCP |
Working the board
Top down. It is ordered by opportunity, and the ordering is the product's opinion about what is worth your time. Overriding it deliberately is fine; working it in category order by accident is not.
Group by page. Several tasks often point at one page, and fixing them together is one edit rather than four. Where the fix is applicable through a connected WordPress site, RankX AI says how many tasks a single change resolves and resolves them together.
Fix reach findings first. A blocked crawler or an unindexed page makes every other number on the account a measurement of nothing, so those are worth doing out of order.
Dismiss what you will not do. A board full of tasks nobody intends to work is a board nobody opens. Dismissed tasks are excluded by default and remain retrievable.
Applying a fix
For some findings on a connected WordPress site, RankX AI can make the change rather than describing it. Currently that covers the SEO title and meta description.
It dry-runs first, returning the exact before and after and a run id. You look at the diff, and applying it is a second, explicit call carrying that run id. Several tasks often point at one page, and the diff says how many the change resolves; they are resolved together for a single charge.
Driving this from an assistant
list_tasks reads the board, create_task adds to it with deduplication, and
apply_task_fix applies a fix with a dry run first.
"Show me the top ten tasks by opportunity score, tell me which of them point at the same page, and dry run the fix for the top one."
See the tool reference.
Where to go next
- The Task Creation Assistant, for drafting a properly written task from a finding.
- Running an audit, the largest source of tasks.
- AI Readiness, the second largest.
Publishing to WordPress
Taking a RankX AI draft to a live WordPress site. What is verified, what is refused, and the two mistakes that cost the most.
The Task Creation Assistant
Turning an audit finding into a properly written task, with steps and a definition of done. What it costs, when to use it, and when not to.