Smart Projects

Smart Projects use AI to keep a project's tasks current as the customer account changes. Pylon evaluates relevant account activity and can create or update tasks based on the AI instructions you provide.

Use Smart Projects for workflows that evolve over time, such as customer onboarding, technical implementations, escalations, and renewal-risk recovery.

A project becomes a Smart Project when it has AI instructions. Without project-level AI instructions, it behaves like a standard project.

How Smart Projects work

1. Add AI instructions to a project or Project Template.

2. When a project is created from a template, it inherits the template's AI instructions.

3. Pylon evaluates the project when it is created and when relevant activity is recorded for its account.

4. Task changes and their supporting reasoning appear in the project's activity log.

New activity does not always result in a change. Pylon leaves the project unchanged when there is not enough evidence for a specific update.

What AI can do

Smart Projects can automatically:

• Create a task when new work is not covered by an existing task

• Update a task's title, description, AI instructions, assignee, due date, or milestone

• Change a task's status when account activity supports the change

Smart Projects do not update project or milestone details or mark the project itself complete.

For an individual task, AI can also prepare these actions for a teammate to review:

• A Slack notification to an available account channel

• A draft for a new customer issue

• An update to a supported task or account field

Prepared actions are never sent or applied without human approval. This is enforced by Pylon and does not depend on wording such as "keep customer-facing updates human-reviewed" in your instructions.

Configure a Smart Project

AI instructions tell Pylon how to maintain the project's tasks. Specify:

• When a task should be created or updated

• Which owner, milestone, status, or due date to use

• What evidence permits a status change

• What task or review action should be created when progress is blocked

For example:

When the customer confirms a launch date, update the due dates of the Launch milestone tasks. If required setup remains incomplete seven days before launch, create a task for the account owner to review the blocker.

Use project-level instructions for behavior that applies across the project. Add task-level instructions only when one task requires different evidence or a specific review action.

Instructions do not add new data sources, enable additional actions, or change Pylon's approval requirements.

Create a Smart Project Template

1. Go to Project Templates in Settings.

2. Create a template or open an existing one.

3. Expand AI instructions and describe how Pylon should maintain projects created from the template.

4. Add task-level AI instructions where a task needs more specific guidance, then save the template.

Projects created from the template inherit its AI instructions. You can edit the instructions on an individual project without changing the original template.

Review AI activity

Open a Smart Project's activity log to review task changes and the evidence used to support them. Open an individual task to review any actions waiting for approval.