Working with Claude in Glacier
Once Claude is connected to your Glacier workspace via MCP, you can interact with your board, cards, and docs through natural language. This page covers common workflows with example prompts.
Board awareness
Start sessions by getting oriented. These prompts give Claude a snapshot of your workspace.
Get a status overview:
"What's currently in progress across the board?"
"Give me a summary of everything that's active right now, grouped by assignee."
Spot blockers:
"Are there any cards that have been in the Active column for more than 3 days?"
"Which cards have been in In Review the longest? Flag anything that might need a follow-up."
Check WIP health:
"Is any column currently at or over its WIP limit?"
"How many cards are in flight right now? Is that within our normal range?"
Card management
Create a single card
"Create a card to add CSV export to the reports page. Set priority to medium."
"Add a card: 'Fix mobile nav overflow on small screens', high priority, assign to me."
Batch create from a brief
Paste a feature brief or spec, then:
"Here's a spec for the new onboarding flow. Break it into cards and add them to the backlog."
"I've outlined the API changes we need. Create cards for each endpoint change."
Move a card
"Move GLACIE-42 to In Review."
"The auth refactor is done. Move the card to Done."
Update a card
"Update the description for GLACIE-67 with the approach we just decided on: [description]"
"Change the priority on GLACIE-55 to high — it's now blocking the launch."
Documentation workflows
Glacier cards can be linked to rich text docs. Claude can read, summarise, and draft them.
Draft a spec from a card
"Read the card for GLACIE-42 and draft a technical spec as a doc. Include API design, data model changes, and open questions."
Summarise a linked doc
"Summarise the doc linked to GLACIE-38. What are the key decisions?"
Create a runbook
"Create a runbook doc for the deployment process we use. Attach it to the Infrastructure card."
Decision records
"We just decided to use Postgres full-text search instead of Algolia for the search feature. Create a decision record doc and link it to the search card."
Compound workflows
These are multi-step workflows that Claude executes in a single conversation. They combine reading, analysis, doc creation, and card creation — the kind of work that normally takes 30 minutes of manual context-switching.
Scaffold a doc tree
Ask Claude to create a structured set of docs for a project or knowledge base area.
"Create an onboarding guide for new team members with three sections: workspace setup, first project walkthrough, and connecting Claude via MCP. Create each as a separate doc under the Guides folder."
"Set up a doc structure for our API: one doc per endpoint group — auth, cards, docs, metrics. Include request/response examples in each."
Claude creates each doc via MCP and organises them in the doc tree. One prompt, full structure.
Audit a doc and create cards
Point Claude at an existing doc — a spec, an architecture overview, a retrospective — and have it identify gaps, risks, or action items. Then create cards directly from the analysis, linked back to the source doc.
"Read the architecture doc for the payments service. Identify any gaps or missing decisions, and create a card for each one in the backlog. Link them all back to the doc."
"Go through the Q1 retro doc. For every action item mentioned, create a card with the right priority and label."
This is where MCP-first design pays off: Claude reads the doc, reasons about its content, writes cards with proper descriptions, and links everything together — all without leaving the conversation.
Review board and create a status doc
The inverse: start from the board, end with a doc.
"Review everything that shipped this week. Create a changelog doc with a summary for each completed card, grouped by label."
"Look at all cards in Active and In Review. Create a status update doc I can share with the team."
Analyse and act
Combine flow metrics with board actions.
"Check our cycle time for the last two weeks. If any card type is trending slower, flag it and create a card to investigate the bottleneck."
"Compare throughput this month vs last month. If it's dropped, look at the board and suggest what might be causing it. Create a card for any process improvement you'd recommend."
Reporting and metrics
Weekly status
"Give me a weekly status report: what was completed, what's in progress, anything blocked?"
"Summarise what shipped this week. Format it as a bullet list I can paste into Slack."
Cycle time
"What's our average cycle time for the last 30 days?"
"Which cards took the longest to complete recently? What do they have in common?"
Flow forecasting
"There are 12 cards in the backlog. Based on our recent throughput, when are we likely to clear them?"
"We need to ship the billing feature by end of month. Is that realistic given current velocity?"
GitHub integration
If your workspace has GitHub connected, you can link cards to issues and pull requests.
Link a card to an existing issue
"Link GLACIE-42 to GitHub issue #87 in blackbearhq/glacier."
Check PR status
"What's the current status of the PR linked to GLACIE-55?"
Create card and issue together
"Create a card for the rate limiting feature and also create a GitHub issue for it in blackbearhq/glacier."
Tips for effective prompts
Be specific about the project. If you have multiple projects, name the one you're asking about.
Reference card IDs when you can. GLACIE-42 is unambiguous. "the auth card" might match multiple things.
Ask for confirmation before bulk changes. Before batch-moving or batch-creating cards, ask Claude to summarise what it's about to do.
Use Claude for drafting, not just reading. The real leverage is generating content — specs, runbooks, decision records — not just fetching data.
Go compound. The highest-leverage prompts combine reading, analysis, and action in a single request. Don't just ask Claude to summarise a doc — ask it to summarise the doc, identify what's missing, and create cards for each gap.
Chain prompts for complex workflows. Start with an overview, then drill into specifics:
- "What's in progress?"
- "Read GLACIE-47 in detail."
- "Draft a doc for the approach we're taking on that card."