I’d love to see recurring task functionality exposed through the Asana API — specifically the ability to set a repeat schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.) when creating or updating a task programmatically.
Right now, recurring tasks are only configurable through the Asana web and mobile interfaces. The API has no way to set or read recurrence rules on tasks. This is a significant gap, especially for anyone using the API or third-party AI tools to build and manage projects automatically.
Here’s a real example of why this matters: I recently used an AI assistant connected to the Asana API to build out a full yearly planning project — 41 tasks across multiple sections covering communications, planning milestones, and end-of-year fundraising pushes, all with specific due dates carefully spaced throughout the year. It was a huge time saver. But at the end of the process, I still had to manually open every single one of those 41 tasks in the app just to set them to repeat yearly — something that completely undermines the automation we’d just built.
Asana’s core value proposition is about reducing repetitive work and automating workflows. Not being able to set recurring tasks via the API is a direct contradiction of that promise. If I can create a task, assign it, set its due date, and add it to a project — all via the API — I should absolutely be able to tell it to repeat annually too.
This would be invaluable for:
Yearly planning and ministry/nonprofit workflows
Content calendars and recurring communications schedules
Business rhythm tasks that repeat on the same dates each year
Any team or individual using AI tools or custom integrations to set up projects programmatically
I’d love to hear if others have run into this same wall, and would encourage anyone who needs this to upvote and share their use case below. Hopefully the Asana product team will prioritize this — it seems like a natural extension of what the API already does so well.
So, I am using Claude to try to do this which may be part of the issue. Claude was able to see recurrence data in Tasks that already had a recurrence set, but when it tried to add annual recurrence to other Tasks, it failed.
Claude response:
“The update_task tool doesn’t have a recurrence parameter exposed, but from the forum posts we know it works by passing it in the request body. Let me test to see if the update_task tool will pass through an undocumented field like recurrence. I’ll try on the first task that currently has no recurrence set.
…
Unfortunately the update_task tool doesn’t pass through undocumented fields like recurrence — it only sends the parameters explicitly defined in its schema. The recurrence field isn’t in the response because it wasn’t sent. The only way to set this would be through a direct HTTP POST to the Asana API with the recurrence field in the body, which requires either a direct API call or a custom script. Since the web_fetch tool can’t reach Asana’s API directly either, I’m unfortunately hitting the same wall.”
So is this more of a Claude integration with the API issue?
Thanks for all your help as I’m fairly new to this.
In a broad sense, yes. More precisely it’s a “for some unknown reason recurrence handling is not documented” issue. If it was, Claude could probably handle it.
I will follow up on this with my Asana contacts regarding requesting it be documented.
Having said that, I’m not sure exactly which Claude product/surface you’re using but if you were to use Claude Code, it could write to the API directly and could handle the recurrences.
Really appreciate you bringing this up to your contacts… it would be awesome to have this functionality via the MCP in normal Claude chat.
Related, the same issue exists with reading and writing comments on a given Task.
Claude response:
"Let me try fetching that Task with stories in opt_fields.
It came back but with no stories data — the opt_fields request for stories wasn’t honored, likely because the MCP tool strips out fields it doesn’t recognize before sending the request, similar to what happened with recurrence on get_task vs update_task.
So to summarize where things stand on stories/comments:
The Asana API absolutely supports reading comments via GET /tasks/{task_gid}/stories — that’s fully documented and working per the forum. Posting comments via POST /tasks/{task_gid}/stories is also supported.
The limitation is purely on this end — the Asana MCP tools connected here don’t expose a stories tool, and the get_task tool appears to strip unrecognized opt_fields before sending the request.
So just like with recurrence, the underlying API capability exists — it’s just not surfaced in the current MCP connector. If Anthropic or the Asana MCP ever adds a get_stories or create_story tool, we’d be able to read and post comments directly from here."
Thanks so much again for your assistance and passing this along.