Create a project with the AI Project Wizard

The framework you choose shapes the structure of the plan, not just its labels:

• PMBOK organizes the work into the five PMBOK process groups, with kickoff and closeout milestones.
• PRINCE2 builds the plan as stages separated by Stage Gate milestones and includes the Project Initiation Document.
• Agile starts with a Sprint 0, plans delivery as three to six sprints of about two weeks each, and ends with a Release milestone.
• Not sure picks one of these three for you from the project type and methodology you choose on the next step. The rule is fixed and described in Fill in the project details.

Each phase is a summary task with its work nested under it as sub-tasks. Phases run one after another: the work of a phase waits for the milestone that closes the phase before it. The exception is two phases the AI treats as clearly parallel, which start together from the same milestone.

The wizard also suggests a short list of resources and assigns them to tasks. This is the one AI surface in Ganttastic that assigns resources: the AI assistant cannot set assignees from chat.

1. In the sidebar, click + Create, then Project. The Create New Project dialog opens.
2. Choose the Build with AI card (the alternative is Start Blank). The card shows your AI capacity: a usage bar, the number of AI plans you have used this month, and your reset date.

Build with AI is disabled in four cases, and each one shows its own message on the card:

• You are using Ganttastic as a guest. The card offers Sign up free instead.
• An Enterprise admin has switched AI off for the whole organization.
• You have used all the AI plans your plan includes this month (1 on Team Member, 2 on Project Coordinator). The card offers Upgrade now.
• You have reached your active project cap. The card offers Upgrade now; completing a project also frees a place.

Being close to your monthly token allowance does not disable the card. From 90% of your tokens the card stays clickable and shows a warning with Upgrade now, and you can still fill in the first steps. The wizard then stops on the Scope & Details step, before it writes any questions, and offers Upgrade and Close.

Generating a plan needs a verified email address. If you signed up with an email and password and have not opened the verification link yet, choosing Build with AI shows Verify your email first instead of the wizard. Google accounts do not need this step. See verify your email.

Three other places open the wizard straight on its Project Details step:

• The Build with AI choice on the Start your project screen, which you see when no project is open, and on the Add tasks to this project screen of a project with no tasks. From an empty project the wizard starts with that project’s name, and Create Project adds the plan to that project instead of creating a new one. If you edit the name in the wizard, the project takes that name. The active project cap does not apply because no project is added. If the project gains tasks before you click it, the wizard says "This project already has tasks. Start a new project for this plan." and the plan goes back to your allowance. On these screens a guest is asked to sign up, an account with an unverified email is asked to verify it, and a free account that has used its monthly plan sees View plans.
• The AI assistant. Ask it to create a project and it opens the wizard with your message, word for word, as the brief (up to 3000 characters), and with a project name when it finds one in your message.
• Generate my first plan on ganttastic.com. If you are signed in with a verified email, the wizard opens in the app. If you are not signed in, the sign up form opens first. The wizard follows once your account can use AI: right away after a Google sign up, or once you verify your email, as long as that happens in the same browser within a day of the click.

At your active project cap, the wizard opened from the AI assistant, from Generate my first plan, or from the Start your project screen lands on the Create New Project card instead, so you can see why the AI path is closed.

The Project Details step asks for four things:

• Project Name (required, up to 100 characters).
• Project start date (required). The scheduler anchors task dates to this day.
• Framework: PMBOK, PRINCE2, Agile, or Not sure. Hover a choice to read a short explanation of it.
• Project Brief (optional at this step, up to 3000 characters).

Not sure does not read your brief. It turns the methodology you pick on the next step into a framework by a fixed rule:

• Agile/Scrum, Hybrid (Wagile), DevOps and SAFe give Agile.
• Process Improvement and Digital Transformation give PRINCE2.
• Everything else gives PMBOK. That includes the other IT / Software methodologies, the other Business Operations focus areas, anything else you type under Other, and every Construction, Marketing Campaign, Event Planning and Custom / Other project.

The framework is saved with the project and cannot be changed after the project is created.

The Project Type step shows six cards: IT / Software, Construction, Marketing Campaign, Event Planning, Business Operations, and Custom / Other.

Once you pick any card except Custom / Other, a required row of pills appears on the same step. Its label depends on the type: Methodology for IT / Software, Delivery model for Construction, Campaign type for Marketing Campaign, Event type for Event Planning, and Focus area for Business Operations. Every list ends with an Other pill that opens a text box where you type your own, at least 2 characters. You cannot continue until you have picked a pill or typed your own option. Custom / Other has no pill row.

Hover a methodology pill whose name is an acronym or an unfamiliar term (for example SDLC, Wagile, ITIL or SAFe) to read what it means.

The Common Considerations step lists approval gates and workstreams that plans in your industry often miss. An IT / Software project offers items like CAB (Change Advisory Board) approval, a security review with a penetration test, and Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). A Construction project offers council permits, an environmental impact assessment, and a WHS induction. Each type has its own short list. The question mark beside an item such as CAB, PIA, ARB or WHS explains the term.

Everything you tick goes into the generated plan, so external approvals get scheduled from day one instead of surfacing late. The wizard asks the AI for two milestones per approval (the submission and the approval) and a task per workstream. The Review step lists what you ticked above the tasks.

The line at the bottom of this step states your monthly AI allowance and reminds you that a plan you never create goes back to it.

The Scope & Details step shows two to four clarifying questions the AI wrote for your specific project, each with an example answer as its placeholder. All questions must be answered before you can continue. If your brief mentions a phase count that conflicts with the framework you picked, an extra question at the top asks you to settle it.

1. Answer each question in a sentence or two.
2. Click Generate Plan.
3. The Building Your Plan screen lists the steps the AI is working through, with a running clock and short tips. A plan can take a few minutes, so keep the window open.

Writing the questions uses tokens from your monthly allowance. If you click Back on this step and then Next again, the wizard writes a fresh set of questions, and those use tokens too.

The wizard waits up to 60 seconds for the questions and almost five minutes for the plan. When the plan wait runs out it says "No plan after almost five minutes, so the wizard stopped waiting for it." and the unfinished plan goes back to your allowance. Retry becomes available once that first attempt has ended, so two plans never generate at once. For the same reason Generate Plan waits while an earlier plan request is still running.

If the AI cannot answer, the Scope & Details or Building Your Plan step shows a message in place of the questions or the plan:

The two allowance refusals show Upgrade and Close instead of Retry, because trying again would get the same answer until your allowance resets.

The plan is scheduled forward from your project start date. Dates you state in the brief or in your answers change that:

• A date that fixes when something happens (a go live, a move, an opening day) becomes that task’s earliest start. The task starts on that date unless the work before it finishes later.
• A date without a year means its first occurrence on or after the project start. "By the end of March" means the last day of March.
• A date the whole project must finish by becomes the plan’s target, and the AI sizes the work to finish by then.
• The wizard also reads dates in your brief and answers itself when the month is a word (5 December 2026, or 5 December) or the date is written as 2026-12-05. A date for an event, such as "Opening day 5 December 2026", is kept on the task that names it, in place of any date the AI chose or left out. A date that no task names is listed on the Review step. A numeric date such as 5/12/2026 is left to the AI, because it reads differently in different countries, and a date before today is ignored.

Plans are scheduled on working days, Monday to Friday. When your brief puts work on a weekend, such as an office move, the AI plans the preparation to finish by the Friday before and adds a milestone on the Monday after. A stated date that falls on a weekend moves to the next working day, and the Review step tells you. The wizard never turns on working on non-working days for a task. To keep a task on a weekend, open it in Task Details after you create the project, enter the weekend date as its Start, and choose Work on this day (see working on a weekend or holiday).

Phases run one after another, as described in what the wizard generates. For how links move tasks after the project is created, see how automatic scheduling works.

The Review Your Plan step lists every generated task and milestone. Before you commit you can:

• Untick the checkbox on any task to leave it out. A counter shows how many tasks are selected.
• Click a task name to rename it inline.
• Click Milestone on a task’s row to convert it to a milestone (the row then reads 0d), and click it again to change it back. A milestone has no duration, so the task’s days of work leave the plan, and a line under the list says how many days that takes out. Turning a milestone back into a task restores the duration it had.
• Delete tasks you do not want in the plan at all.

When you untick or delete a task that other tasks follow, those tasks follow whatever the removed task followed, and a line under the list says so, for example "1 linked task now follows what the removed task followed." A task left with nothing to follow starts on the project start date, and the line says that too. Ticking the task again restores its links.

A Dates to check before you create the project notice appears when the plan does not keep a date you gave. It lists, in plain sentences:

• A date you set that moves, because the work before it finishes later or because the date is not a working day.
• A date before the project start, which is not used.
• A date in your brief that no task in the plan is set for.
• A brief that says the project starts on a different day from your start date.
• A go live, launch or opening milestone that lands after your target date. When the plan has no such milestone, the end of the whole plan is compared instead.
• A task that reads as weekend work but is scheduled on weekdays.

The notice updates as you tick, untick, and delete tasks. If the AI referred to a task that does not exist, a warning such as "2 dependencies could not be parsed and were dropped from the plan." appears above the list.

A banner reminds you that your plan isn’t saved until you click Create Project. Do not refresh or leave the page here: that loses the plan. The dialog has no close button and ignores Esc and outside clicks at this step, so you cannot lose the plan by accident.

When the list looks right, click Create Project. Every task the wizard creates starts at 0% progress, and phases open expanded so you see their sub-tasks straight away.

To leave the Review step without creating anything, click Close without creating. A confirmation asks you to choose Keep reviewing or Discard plan. Discarding gives the plan back to your monthly allowance.

A generated plan that never becomes a project also goes back on its own when:

• Create Project fails, for example at your active project cap. The error shows above the list and you stay on the Review step.
• The wizard stops waiting for the plan.
• You close the wizard while the plan is being built.
• You leave or refresh the page while the plan sits on the Review step.

Giving a plan back returns the AI plan and the tokens used to generate it. Only the tokens used for the clarifying questions stay spent. A plan that did become a project stays spent, and deleting that project later does not give the plan back.

If you return to a Review step whose plan was already given back, for example in a page restored from the browser history, clicking Create Project shows "This plan was already given back to your monthly allowance, so it can’t be created." above the list. Click Close without creating and generate a new plan.

A success screen sums up the result with chips for phases (process groups when a PMBOK plan uses them as its rows), tasks, milestones, approximate duration in weeks, and the framework used. If no tasks were added, it says so and suggests building the plan on the Gantt or with the AI Assistant. It offers two next steps:

• Chat with AI to refine opens the AI assistant with refinement prompts ready to go.
• View on the Gantt closes the wizard so you can start working with the tasks directly.

Wizard generations are limited per monthly cycle by plan:

Every generation also draws from your shared monthly token allowance, the same pool used by every AI feature. Once you have used 90% of your tokens you cannot start a new generation until the allowance resets on your billing anniversary (or on your account creation day on the free plan). The wizard still opens, and the refusal comes on the Scope & Details step before any questions are written. If writing the questions is what takes you to 90%, the same message replaces them and their tokens stay spent. On Team Member and Project Coordinator, the AI usage meter in the sidebar then adds "None available until your capacity resets." after your plan count. A plan you never create goes back to your allowance, as described in if you do not create the plan. See plans and pricing for the full comparison.