The Scenario
You're a tech lead. Three weeks ago you broke a large feature into 30 Shortcut stories. This week you've been collecting task-level breakdowns for each story — the specific implementation steps — in a Google Sheet. Column A has the story ID, column B has the task description. Thirty rows. You need one task created under each story before the next sprint starts so engineers have the checklist ready when they pick up the work.
The bad version:
- Open story sc-1234. Click "Add Task." Type the task from row 1. Save.
- Open story sc-1235. Click "Add Task." Type the task from row 2. Save.
- Get to row 12 and realize you have a story ID in the sheet that no longer exists — it was merged. Decide to skip it, then lose track of which rows you skipped.
- Finish row 30 and realize you never confirmed whether the tasks actually saved on stories 8 through 11 because you were going too fast.
Thirty stories times one task each is a 45-minute clicking exercise that leaves you uncertain about the result.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the story ID and task description from each row, creates the task in Shortcut, and writes back a confirmation — so you know exactly what landed.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each row in my sheet, create a task in Shortcut story ID (column A) with the task description from column B and write the returned task ID into column C
What You Get
- A task created under each Shortcut story in column A
- The new task ID written into column C for each successful row
- Rows where the story ID was invalid or the task creation failed flagged in column C with the error
- A sidebar summary of how many tasks were created and how many rows had errors
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Some task descriptions in column B are blank
For each row in this sheet where column B is not blank, create a Shortcut task on the story ID in column A using the description from column B. Skip rows where column B is empty and write "skipped — no description" in column C.
Tasks should be assigned to a specific member
For each row in this sheet, create a task in Shortcut story ID (column A) using the description in column B, and assign it to the member whose ID is in cell D1. Write the returned task ID into column C.
Multiple tasks per story, one per row
This sheet has multiple rows with the same story ID in column A but different task descriptions in column B. Create one Shortcut task per row, using the story ID in column A and the description in column B. Write each returned task ID into column C.
Create tasks and mark them complete for already-done items
For each row in this sheet, create a Shortcut task on story ID in column A with description from column B. If column C says "done", mark the task as completed immediately after creating it. Write the task ID into column D.
The value is knowing every row either created a task or told you exactly why it didn't — rather than clicking through 30 stories and guessing.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your task list sheet, then ask it to create the tasks. See also Bulk Update Shortcut Stories From a Google Sheet or return to the Shortcut integration overview.