The product has a working vocabulary and an internal one. This page is the mapping, so that if you meet an internal word — in an older thread, a support reply, or an API field — you know what it means.
Retired terms
Words that are easy to confuse
These are not renames. Both words are correct; they mean different things.
interface · surface · doc · page
Interface is what the work is returned as (a sheet, a deck, a board). Surface is the category of interface. Doc is a stored, versioned file. Page is a screen in the app.
variant · alternative · choice
Choice variable is the dimension being varied (price, timing). Variant is one built result. Alternative is an option the audit recorded as ruled out.
driver · metric
Driver is the measure a project is a bet on. Metric is also a milestone kind — a milestone that tracks a number rather than a deliverable.
task · run
Task is what you asked for. Run is one execution of it — re-running a task produces a second run.
task — four places the word appears
The product uses one word for four different things. Which one is meant follows from where you are.
- A task on the home page and in the Tasks tab is a request you sent and everything it produced. This is the sense every other page of these docs means, and the one the Settings for scope, modes and credits apply to.
- A task on a Timeline interface is one dated row — a piece of work with a start, an end and dependencies. A run can place many of them, and they are copied onto the Space timeline. An Action item in Issues is one of these.
- A suggested task is the grey text offered in the composer before you type: open work the Space still owes, drawn from earlier runs.
- A task card is a to-do with an assignee, labels, a checklist and a due date. It lives on a Board interface, in a doc's Tasks panel, or in a Tasks block inside a doc. The Settings group named Tasks configures these cards, not your runs.
When a label alone would be ambiguous — "New task", "Delete task", "Tasks" — read it against the surface it sits on: the composer and home page mean a run; a Timeline means a row; a doc sidebar or a Board means a card.