# Task graph (dependency graph)

Band: established — Settled. Documented by a primary source and not seriously disputed.
Group: How work is arranged
Implemented by: https://clickai.dev/skills/to-tickets

Work decomposed into nodes with edges recording what blocks what, so independent nodes can run concurrently and dependent ones cannot start early. The idea is not new — LangGraph's StateGraph, AutoGen's GraphFlow, Google ADK and Anthropic's December 2024 orchestrator-workers pattern all predate the 2026 name for it. The useful part is the edge, not the diagram: a graph you drew but never enforced is a picture. Enforcement means native edges, and it comes with a disjointness rule most teams learn the hard way — an item blocked purely by edges must never also carry a “blocked” label, which is reserved for blockers that are not tracker items: a vendor gate, a scheduling constraint, a pending adjudication. A stale label is a phantom edge.

## See also

- [Frontier](https://clickai.dev/legend/frontier)
- [Graph engineering](https://clickai.dev/legend/graph-engineering)
- [Issue-as-spec](https://clickai.dev/legend/issue-as-spec)

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