What is a Mission?
Anatomy of a VantagePeers mission — every field, the status lifecycle, and the difference between missions and tasks.
What is a Mission?
A mission is a persistent, orchestrated body of work stored in VantagePeers. It groups related tasks under a single tracking object with a pilot, a status lifecycle, a progress indicator, and optional template lineage.
Field anatomy
Prop
Type
Status lifecycle
Mission statuses flow from ideation to completion. Each transition must be driven by the pilot explicitly via update_mission_status.
brainstorm → plan → execute → validate → complete| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
brainstorm | Idea captured, not yet planned. No tasks required. |
plan | Tasks defined and sequenced. Pilot is preparing the workload. |
execute | Active work underway. Subagents are dispatched. |
validate | All tasks done. Pilot or a reviewer is checking evidence. |
complete | Mission closed with evidence. No further changes expected. |
Status aliases (for queries only, not for writes):
"open"— expands to["brainstorm", "plan", "execute", "validate"]"active"— expands to["plan", "execute"]
There is no blocked or cancelled status on missions. To pause a mission, leave it in plan or execute and add a note to the brief. To abandon, move to complete and document the reason in the brief.
How tasks link to missions
Every task has an optional missionId field. When set, the task is part of that mission's workload. Tasks also have dependsOn — an array of task IDs that must reach done status before this task can start.
Mission ──┬── Task A (no deps)
├── Task B dependsOn: [Task A]
├── Task C dependsOn: [Task A]
└── Task D dependsOn: [Task B, Task C] ← barrierThe combination of missionId + dependsOn gives you full DAG sequencing within a mission.
Mission vs Task — comparison table
| Aspect | Task | Mission |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Single atomic step | Multi-step orchestrated body of work |
| Tracking | Status only | Status + progress % + agents + pilot + brief |
| Sequencing | None (tasks are independent) | dependsOn chains tasks in a DAG |
| Templates | None | VR mission templates — instantiate N tasks in one call |
| Best for | Fix a bug, write a file, run a check | End-to-end delivery spanning days or teams |
| Lifecycle | todo → in_progress → review → done | brainstorm → plan → execute → validate → complete |
| Evidence | completionNote on the task | Evidence on each linked task + final status transition |
Progress tracking
Progress is a manually managed 0–100 integer. The pilot updates it after meaningful milestones (e.g. after each phase completes). It does not auto-compute from task statuses — the pilot is the authority.
// Update progress after a phase closes
mcp__vantage-peers__update_mission_progress({
missionId: "k57xxxxx",
progress: 50
})A common convention: set progress in multiples of 25 for a 4-phase mission (25 / 50 / 75 / 100).