My First Experience with Taskmaster! Big Issues with PRD Parsing (Lost Data)

[LucaL1fe]

Hey everyone,

I want to share my First Experience with Taskmaster. This was actually a post for the reddit, but because of Reddit’s filters, it got immediatly removed, so I want to share it here because I think its important. I hope thats okay 😇

I'm working on a large-scale software project that involves multiple components: an Electron app for Windows, browser extensions, and more. It's ambitious, and I’m using the following setup: Windows 11 + WSL + Claude Code Opus.

The Initial Struggle:
On my first attempt, I quickly realized I was going in circles. The AI kept hallucinating, and the project lost coherence. I knew I had to start over—this time with structure.
Instead of jumping into code, I wrote a Product Requirements Document (PRD). It’s massive over 30 pages in Google Docs, font size 10. It includes every detail: architecture, user flows, database schemas, text fields, UI logic, and more.
Enter Taskmaster. I thought this tool could help me break the PRD into manageable, well-contextualized tasks. But then reality hit...

Major Parsing Issues
I fed the full PRD into Taskmaster and expected at least 100 well-defined tasks. Instead, I got 10 tasks—and over 80% of the information was missing.
I thought, “Okay, maybe I just need to expand those tasks into subtasks.” That’s when things got worse.
I used the complexity report feature to expand them. The subtasks looked fine at first glance, but I quickly noticed serious deviations. For example:

1. My PRD specified exact database models. The subtasks had missing columns or new ones I never defined.
2. I mentioned using electron-builder. Taskmaster suggested Electron Forge instead.
3. One part of the system was supposed to run a WebSocket server. Taskmaster assigned that role to the wrong component entirely.

The core issue seems to be that subtasks are generated only based on the parent task, not the original PRD. Since those parent tasks were already missing most of the detail, the subtasks veered off course. Sometimes dangerously so.

My Workaround (And It Works!)
Since Taskmaster doesn't currently offer a way to customize the parsing granularity or task count, I created my own workaround.
I asked Claude Opus to read the PRD and directly generate a Taskmaster task file, skipping the default parsing entirely (prompt is at the end of the post). And guess what? It worked really well:

• I now have about 50 detailed tasks instead of just 10.
• Around 80% of the PRD content is reflected accurately.
• Tasks even reference the original PRD sections for added context.

It's not perfect. Some tasks still make incorrect assumptions, but it's way better than the native parsing. I now use Taskmaster for management and Claude Code Opus for task generation.

What I'd Love to See in the Future:

A granularity slider or a way to set expected task count during PRD parsing.

Subtasks that are generated using the full PRD as context, not just the parent task.

Less hallucination overall during task generation.

Thanks to the devs for building Taskmaster! It's powerful, but I'd love to see it become even more PRD-aware.

My AI prompt for parsing to Claude Code:

You are tasked with deeply analyzing and understanding my software project in order to generate a complete, detailed, and dependency-aware implementation plan.
Your job:

1. Read and comprehend the contents of prd_breakfree_backup.md. This document outlines the full scope and goals of the project.
2. From this, understand the entire system architecture, workflows, dependencies, and user intentions.
3. Based on that understanding, generate a step-by-step implementation guide that:
    - Respects task dependencies and logical order.
    - Breaks down complex steps into simple, small, and implementable coding tasks.
    - Ensures each task is self-contained with all the context and details it needs to be completed independently of the rest of the project.
    -Avoids information loss — no detail should be omitted that would be necessary for a developer to carry out the task.

Output format:

- The result should be a file named claude_code_tasks.json.
- It should follow the same structure and style as a the taskmaster tasks.json file (read it to understand it) <-- TODO Here I had a little example file with 3 tasks

Additional instructions:

- Think like a senior software architect.
- Assume no one reading the task file has prior knowledge of the whole system — make each task fully explain itself.
- Use your strongest reasoning capabilities (“ultrathink”) to ensure clarity, completeness, and accuracy. Although break every complex task down into small ones which are easier to implement

[BradKML]

This is the exact thing I hoped Task Master could address. We need something that captures all the desired information into each of the tasks, and also PRD when the user wants to offload all the requirements on them, instead of having the LLM redact information.

There are also discussions on memory banks, cus not everyone is on Calude Code but instead Cursor, Windsurf, or even RooCode/Cline #487 #284 #551

[nathangoss]

@LucaL1fe - Thanks for the helpful write-up.

Quick question - if your PRD was so large, how did you manage to get Claude to output a detailed task.json without hitting the message limits?

"This response paused because Claude reached its max length for a message. Hit continue to nudge Claude along"

My PRD is only ~622 lines and only gets about halfway through the task.json generation before Claude says it has hit its chat limit and gives me the option to "Continue". This, however, starts to jumble the output file.

I am on a Pro plan - not sure if the above changes with a higher plan?

[nathangoss]

Update to the above....

I broke my PRD down into sections/phases, each with steps. I then instructed Claude to output a single task file for each step, and stop for confirmation before continuing.

Worked well - now have 21 task files that I can combine, or just work through as needed.

FYI for those having similar issues.

Thanks for a great tool TaskMaster!