Tasks: hand EquationDB the work, not just the query
Most questions a portfolio manager asks are not one query. "Which momentum names are still below their highs, and how did similar setups do after earnings?" is a screen, a join and an event study, and it usually ends up as a message to an analyst. Tasks is that message, handed to EquationDB instead.
Write it like you would to an analyst
Open Tasks → New task and write what you want — plain English, a query, or both:
Which top500 stocks have the strongest 3-month momentum and are still below their 52-week high? Show the top 15 with sector.
EquationDB turns it into a plan of ordinary EquationDB queries, checks each one (it parses, it runs under your entitlements, it keeps your dates, numbers and tickers), runs it and posts the result in the ticket: a short summary whose numbers all come from the rows, each step's table, a link to open every query in the editor, and a CSV of every row.
Not sure where to start? ✦ Samples opens 30 ready-made tasks in eleven groups — screens, single symbols, comparisons, events and outcomes, fundamentals, earnings, themes, supply chain, recurring reports, alerts and English-plus-query.
It asks only when the answer changes the result
A clear task gets no questions at all. Missing details get the default a portfolio manager would expect, stated as an assumption ("period: the last 1 year", "universe: top500"). EquationDB asks only when something is genuinely ambiguous — a ticker one letter away from a much larger company ("GOGL is Golden Ocean Group — did you mean GOOGL?"), a request that contradicts itself, or something it cannot do ("buy 100 shares"). Answer in the ticket and it re-reads the task with your answer. A question you have answered is never asked again.
Talk to it in the comments
The comment box drives the task:
run againruns the current plan once more;rerun with 30 rowsor@EquationDB add P/E and sort by itre-plans with your change and runs it;/assign @bob,/close,/reopen,/canceldo what the buttons do.
Each command needs the same rights as its button, and each one leaves a line in the timeline.
A task remembers
Every time EquationDB re-reads a task it gets the whole history: the text as first written and every edit, every question and answer, every instruction and comment, every plan with its assumptions and every run with its queries, row counts and results. A re-interpretation is your original request plus every later instruction applied in order — the later one wins where two conflict — never just the latest comment. 🧠 What EquationDB knows about this task on the ticket shows all of it, including exactly what the planner reads.
Safe by design
- Every step runs with the task creator's entitlements and caps, never anyone else's.
- Anything that would create something — an alert, a definition, a saved query — waits for an explicit Approve.
- Tasks are private to you, the assignee and the watchers by default; share one with your firm in one click. Tasks never cross firms.
- Each interpretation and run has an AI and a query-time budget; when one is reached the task says which and when it resets.
Recurring and live
Give a task a schedule — daily, weekly on a day, monthly on a day — and every run posts a new result to the same ticket: a Monday digest of last week's rarest events, a morning line on breadth and the VIX. The list, the ticket and the Tasks badge update live as plans, questions, runs and results arrive.
Tasks are in the app today under Tasks, in the API at /v1/tasks, and in the MCP server as xeno_tasks. Start with a sample, then make it yours.