Views, filters & query language

Finding the work that matters

A project board shows everything in the project. Most of the time you only care about a slice of it: the open work, the items assigned to you, the high-priority tasks, the bugs in one module. Elliptic gives you three layers for getting to that slice. Filters narrow what you are looking at right now. Saved views remember an arrangement so you can return to it with one click. And PQL, the Elliptic Query Language, lets you express anything filters cannot, in a precise expression you run on the Query page or ask for in plain English.

All three operate on the same building block, the work item (a task, bug, story, or epic). Because agents are first-class members of an org and operate the same surfaces over the company-brain MCP on your organization's own model key, the queries you write by hand are exactly the queries an agent reasons over. A PQL expression is a shared, exact definition of "the work that matters", whether a person or an agent is reading it.

Filtering work items

Filters live on a project's board. They are applied in your browser, so the board responds instantly as you toggle them, and they never change the underlying tasks. Open a project and you have several controls that stack together, each narrowing the set further.

The board controls

The Filter menu

Next to the inline controls is a Filter menu that adds three more filters, each accepting multiple values at once:

Active filters from the Filter menu appear as removable chips next to it, and a small count badge on the button shows how many are on. Click the X on a chip to drop that one, or Clear all to reset every menu filter at once. The status, assignee, and search controls live inline on the board toolbar, so they are always one click away.

Saved views

A saved view is a named arrangement of a board you can return to. On a project board it captures the current grouping (swimlanes by none, assignee, or priority) together with the inline status, assignee, and search filters, under a name you choose. Save it once, and selecting it later restores that arrangement in a click. Board views are stored in your browser, so they are personal to you and to the device you save them on.

1. 1
   Arrange the board

   Set the grouping and the status, assignee, and search filters until the board looks the way you want to keep it.
2. 2
   Save it

   Open the views bar, choose to save the current arrangement, and give it a clear name such as "My open work" or "In review".
3. 3
   Reopen any time

   Select the view later to restore its grouping and filters in one click. A small dot marks a view you have changed since you last saved it.
4. 4
   Set a default

   Pin one view as the default for that board so its arrangement is applied automatically the next time the board loads.

You can rename, delete, or lock a view from the views menu. Locking guards a view against accidental edits, so its name and definition stay put until you unlock it. There is at most one default per board, marking another view as default moves the star to it.

Teamspace views across a team's projects

A team gets its own kind of saved view, created from the Views tab on the team page. Instead of looking at a single project, a teamspace view shows the union of work items across every project linked to the team. Open it and you see one combined count drawn from all of the team's projects at once. Visibility rides on team membership, so any member of the team sees the whole union, and the dataset is not re-checked project by project. Triage items and archived tasks are left out, and results are ordered by the board's sort order and item number.

PQL, the Elliptic Query Language

PQL is a small, precise filter language for work items. Where the board filters cover the common cases, PQL reaches every queryable field, combines conditions with boolean logic, and adds a handful of functions for the questions that come up most. A PQL query is filter-only. It describes which items match, and Elliptic returns the list. You write and run PQL on the Query page in your workspace.

Fields

A query is built from comparisons against an item's fields. The available fields are:

Operators

Each field is compared with an operator. PQL supports equality and ordering, a contains operator for text, and list membership:

• = and != for equals and not-equals.
• ~ for contains: title ~ "payment" matches any title that contains the word, case-insensitively.
• <, <=, >, >= for ordered comparisons, most useful on number and due_date.
• IN [...] and NOT IN [...] to test membership in a list, for example status in ["todo", "in_progress"].

Combining conditions

Conditions compose with the boolean keywords and, or, and not, and you can group them with parentheses to control precedence. For example, (priority = "high" or priority = "urgent") and not is_done() reads as high or urgent items that are not yet done.

Functions

Six built-in functions cover the common questions that are awkward to express as plain comparisons. Each takes no arguments and is written with empty parentheses:

# Overdue bugs that nobody is working on
kind = "bug" and is_overdue() and has_no_assignee()

# High or urgent items that are still open
priority in ["high", "urgent"] and is_open()

# Anything that mentions billing in its title or description
title ~ "billing" or description ~ "billing"

# Release-blocking bugs not yet in review or done
release_blocker = true and kind = "bug" and status not in ["in_review", "done"]

Validating and running a query

Open the Query page from your workspace. Type a query into the editor, then run it. Elliptic first validates the query, parsing it and checking that every field and function is one it knows, and then executes it across your org's items. The page shows the result count and a list of matching items, each with its identifier, title, priority, and status. Click any result to jump straight to that item on its project board. A few example queries sit under the editor as one-click starting points, and you can run with the Run button or with Cmd/Ctrl+Enter.

Ask in plain English

You do not have to know the grammar to use PQL. At the top of the Query page there is an Ask in plain English box. Type a request the way you would say it, like "overdue bugs nobody is working on" or "high priority items in review", and Elliptic turns it into PQL for you. This translation runs on your organization's own model key (BYOK), the same key behind every other AI feature.

1. 1
   Describe what you want

   Type a plain-English request into the Ask in plain English box, for example "unassigned release blockers".
2. 2
   Generate the query

   Elliptic sends your request to your org's model, gets back a PQL query, and validates it before showing it to you.
3. 3
   Review and run

   The generated query drops into the editor and runs automatically, so you see both the exact query and its results. Edit the query by hand from there if you want to refine it.

Because the result is real PQL, you keep the precision of the query language with the ease of natural language. If the model produces something that does not parse, Elliptic tells you so and asks you to rephrase, rather than running a broken query. This is also how an agent can take a request like "show me everything blocking the launch" and turn it into a query it can actually execute over the company brain.

Sharing a teamspace view

A teamspace view can be turned into a read-only public link so people outside your workspace can see the slice without an account. Publishing a view generates a secret token and a public path of the form /public/views/{token}. Anyone with that link sees a stripped-down, read-only snapshot of the matching items (identifier, title, status, and priority), and nothing else about your org. They cannot edit anything, and they cannot navigate into the rest of your workspace.

• Publish a view from the team's Views tab to create its public link. Elliptic mints a single unguessable token, and the link is copied to your clipboard so you can hand it out.
• Visit the link to see the current snapshot. It shows the union across the team's linked projects, the same as inside the app, minus triage and archived items.
• Revoke the link at any time. Once revoked, the token stops working immediately and the view is private again. Publishing later mints a fresh token.

Published views sit alongside the other read-only links in Elliptic, like public project boards and shared notes. Each is a single unguessable token you can revoke at any time, and each exposes only a minimal, read-only snapshot of the underlying work, never write access or the rest of your workspace.