Projects and milestones

A project is a bounded outcome with issues doing the work. Milestones are the results on the way. Hydrant counts what actually got done, and asks for proof before anyone declares victory.

Before you start

• Admins and the Owner create and edit projects and milestones, post updates, set project and milestone targets, and run lifecycle actions (Pause, Complete, Cancel, Archive and friends).
• Members can read every project and move issues in and out of projects and milestones. The buttons still show; the save is refused with “Your role in this workspace does not allow this action.”
• Nothing here needs a paid plan.

Who can do what.

Steps

Create a project

1. Open Projects in the sidebar.
2. Click Create project.
3. Type a Name. The dialog’s own advice: “Name the thing. We’ve canceled the 40-slide strategy deck.” Pick an icon and color if you like, and a Lead under the name: the person or agent coordinating it. Being lead grants no extra permissions. Priority sits beside Lead and uses the issue scale: No priority, Low, Medium, High or Urgent.
4. Click Create project.

That’s enough. A name alone creates a Planned project with no milestones and no issues (and no lead, if you left it Unassigned). Open Add context in the same dialog, or Edit project later (the section is called Context there, and Save keeps your changes), to fill in:

Field	What it’s for
Summary	One line for the project list.
Purpose and scope	What’s in, and what isn’t.
Outcome	What changes when this ships.
Definition of done	How you’ll verify the outcome.

A project needs a lead, an outcome and a definition of done before it can be Active by hand. It can still go Active by itself without them (see below); the page then names only the context still missing. Fix that before the project becomes folklore.

Know the states

A project is always in one of five states:

State	Means
Planned	Exists. Nothing has started.
Active	Work is moving.
Paused	Deliberately on hold. Issues keep their statuses.
Completed	Outcome delivered, with evidence on record.
Canceled	Closed without an outcome.

A milestone is Open, Achieved or Canceled. Archive is separate from state: it hides a project or milestone from the default list and can be undone.

Let issues drive the state

You don’t flip Planned to Active. Your issues do.

• Planned becomes Active as soon as one member issue reaches In Progress, a review stage or Done. This happens even if the project has no lead, outcome or definition of done.
• Active (or Planned) becomes Completed when every member issue that isn’t in the Trash is Done or Canceled, and at least one is Done. Hydrant records an acceptance with generated evidence, credited to whoever made the final issue change. The page says Completed automatically: “Every issue finished, so the project closed itself. New or reopened work makes it Active again.”
• An automatically completed project goes back to Active when a member issue reopens or open work is added. The earlier completion stays in History.

Iced, snoozed, Backlog, Ready, In Progress and review issues all hold a project open. An empty project, or one where everything was canceled, never completes itself. Paused, Canceled, archived and manually completed projects never change state automatically, and milestones are never achieved automatically.

This runs for anyone allowed to change the issue, Members included.

When a project completes, you get confetti on its page or in the Projects list, whether you closed it or someone else did, and an achieved milestone gets a brief highlight. Each plays once per browser, within 14 days of landing. To skip them, turn Celebrations off in Settings › Preferences.

Use the Actions menu

Everything deliberate lives in Actions, beside Edit project at the top of the project page. What’s on offer depends on the state:

State	Actions
Planned	Pause project, Cancel project…, Archive project…
Active	Pause project, Complete project…, Cancel project…, Archive project…
Paused	Resume project, Cancel project…, Archive project…
Completed or Canceled	Reopen project…, Archive project…
Archived	Restore project replaces the menu

Each item opens a dialog for that one action. Hydrant loads the affected work first, then asks for what it needs:

• Pause and Resume ask for a one-line Reason. Resume returns to Active only if work has started and the project has a lead, outcome and definition of done. Otherwise it returns to Planned, and goes Active on its own once work moves.
• Complete shows the leaf work as Left behind, Done and Canceled, and requires Evidence. “Optimism is lovely. Attach evidence.” If anything is left behind, canceled, a parent issue or an unfinished milestone, you must also fill in Reason to say what happens to it.
• Cancel closes the project without an outcome and asks for a reason. Issues keep their statuses.
• Reopen puts the project back in play: Active if the lead, outcome and definition of done exist, Planned if not. The earlier outcome stays on the record.
• Archive hides the project from the default list. Issues keep their statuses. Restore it before adding new work.

The state chip in the header is a badge, not a control.

Add milestones

1. On the project page, open the Milestones tab and click Add milestone. A project with nothing in it yet also offers Add milestone in its list of next steps on Overview.
2. Give it a Name (“A result. ‘Phase 2’ doesn’t count.”) and optional Definition of done.
3. Save.

A project holds up to 100 milestones, archived ones included. Order them with Move up and Move down under Criteria and actions. Order never creates dependencies; it only decides which open milestone the page calls the Next milestone.

When every issue in a milestone is Done or Canceled, it says “All done. Your move.” That’s a prompt, not a promotion. Click Review milestone, set State to Achieved, add Evidence and confirm with Mark achieved. An achieved milestone offers Reopen milestone. Archive milestone is under Criteria and actions.

Put issues in a project

Each issue belongs to at most one project, and at most one milestone inside that project. Both are optional.

• From the issue: use the Project and Milestone rows in the issue’s side panel. Picking a milestone fills in its project. Changing the project clears the old milestone.
• From the project page: on Overview, click Link existing issues in the side panel, find the issue, and click Move here. Or click New issue beside it to create an issue already in the project.
• When creating an issue: set the project in the new-issue dialog.

Parents and sub-issues don’t have to share a project. A sub-issue can live in another project entirely; moving a parent never drags its children along.

Adding work to a Completed or Canceled project, or an Achieved or Canceled milestone, asks you to review the destination and give a Reason for adding work. The earlier acceptance stays as it was, and the page flags that scope changed since. An automatically completed project is the exception: it just goes Active again. Archived projects don’t accept new work until restored.

Post updates

Under Updates, click Post update and answer What changed? “Spare us ‘making progress.’ What changed?” Updates are append-only. To correct one, post another.

What you should see

The Projects list groups projects by state. Completed and Canceled start folded away, except when nothing is Active, Planned or Paused: then Completed starts open, and a Nothing in flight. line with its own Create project sits above the groups. Each row leads with its priority, the same mark issues use (a dash means no priority), then shows the lead, a progress bar with a done/total count, the last 14 days of activity as a strip of one cell per day (days follow the workspace’s planning timezone, or the cycle timezone until one is confirmed), and Stalled. Still waiting. on anything Active with no activity for 14 days. Search by name, then use Filter for State, Lead or Priority; each choice becomes a chip you can change or remove, and Clear drops them all. Display holds the view: Sub-grouping, Ordering (Name · A–Z, Recently updated, Most complete first, the default, or Most urgent first: urgent to no priority inside each state, then by name) and Show archived projects to see the attic. A dot on Display means it differs from the default, and Reset puts it back. Clear leaves Display alone.

A workspace with no projects skips the filters and offers Create project. If every project is archived, the list says so and offers Include archived. When a search or filter leaves nothing, the message says which one did it, with Clear search, Clear filters or both. If the only matches are archived, it says so and offers Include archived first.

On a project page, the priority sits beside the lead; pick it there to change it at once. A project’s priority is its own: its issues keep theirs, and nothing caps how many projects can be urgent. Agents read and set it through get_project, list_projects, create_project and edit_project.

A project page has three tabs: Issues, Milestones and Overview. It opens on Issues, where you run the project from. Milestones holds the milestones, in order, with their progress and actions. Overview holds the outcome, definition of done, updates and History, with the side panel beside them. A project with nothing in it yet opens on Overview instead, which shows one short list of next steps: Edit project for the outcome and definition of done, New issue or Link existing issues for the work, and Add milestone. The sections appear as soon as any of those exists. The side panel, The work, keeps the counts honest:

• Progress counts leaf issues: members that have no sub-issues outside the Trash. Parents are listed separately and never counted, so a parent and its three children don’t count as four things done.
• The percent is done ÷ (everything not canceled). Canceled leaves get their own segment. The percent rounds down, so 199 of 200 is 99%, never 100%.
• Points appear when the workspace uses sizes and at least one live issue is counted: size points done out of the total, with a count of unsized issues. See Labels, sizes and priority.
• By status, Blocked, Milestones (achieved out of open plus achieved), Last activity and Next milestone.
• Blockers outside this project opens to list direct blockers that live elsewhere.

There’s no health color, forecast or per-person breakdown. Progress is arithmetic, not a mood.

Issues is the same issue list as the rest of the workspace, already filtered to this project. The header folds into one compact strip so the list gets the room. It opens on All issues, grouped by status and ordered by priority with the most urgent first, sub-issues and finished work included; the view picker beside New issue switches to Control tower (work from Ready through review, blocked work marked, plus anything closed today), Refinery or Open issues (everything not done or canceled, Backlog through review; Iced and snoozed stay out). The project filter doesn’t show as a chip and Clear filters leaves it alone, so the list never wanders off into the rest of the workspace. Everything else works as it does on any list: filters, Remove before flight on Control tower, Save view, selection, the row menu and Display, whose List or Board and grouping are kept for this project in this browser. New issue files straight into the project. Open an issue and closing it brings you back here, filters intact. How the Board works: Board.

History, the last section of the page, keeps every acceptance, with the evidence, the reviewed issues and the definition of done at the time. Open Acceptance evidence to see them all, or All changes for every recorded change. Each change names the issue it touched, if any, and says what changed, in the same words as that issue’s own history. Details opens longer text, such as an edited outcome or a posted update. View earlier updates, under Updates, opens All changes for you.

If it goes sideways

• “Your role in this workspace does not allow this action.” Project, milestone and target changes need an Admin or the Owner. Moving issues in and out doesn’t.
• The project went Active with no lead or outcome. Expected: an issue started. Click Edit project and add the lead, outcome and definition of done.
• Everything’s Done but the project is still Active. Something isn’t finished. Iced, snoozed and Backlog members hold it open, and so does a parent issue that isn’t Done. Check By status, or complete it yourself from Actions.
• The milestone says all done but isn’t Achieved. Milestones never grade their own homework. Use Review milestone.
• Complete is greyed out. It needs Evidence, and a Reason if work is left behind. If the review list is long, click Review more work until it’s all loaded.
• “Project changed. Load latest state and review draft.” Someone else changed the project or its issues while you were reviewing. Click Load latest state and review draft, read it again, then save. Your text is kept.
• “Restore this project before editing it.” It’s archived. Use Restore project first.
• “This project retains 100 milestones, archived ones included. Reuse an existing milestone.” Archiving a milestone doesn’t free a place.
• The progress bar disagrees with the issue list. The bar counts leaf issues only; the list shows parents too. View all project issues shows everything.