STAGECRAFT FOR JIRA

Admin and user guide

What Stagecraft does

Stagecraft turns the statuses of a Jira workflow into stages, each with a definition of ready: checklist items, required fields, child work items, approvals and AI agent results. When a card is not ready for the next stage, Jira's workflow validator stops the move and the card shows what is still missing. Every stage visit keeps one live comment on the card with who moved it, what was checked and who must answer.

Install

  1. A Jira admin installs Stagecraft for Jira from the Atlassian Marketplace and accepts the permissions it asks for.
  2. Open it from Apps › Stagecraft, from Jira settings › Apps, or from a space's Space settings › Stagecraft.
  3. Getting started shows the setup steps and what is done in the chosen space.

Stagecraft works in company-managed and team-managed spaces. In team-managed spaces flows guide but cannot block moves (Jira does not offer the workflow validator there).

Set up a space

  1. Permissions (optional). Jira admins can do everything from the start. Give other people one of Stagecraft's roles (admin, maintainer, reader) through groups, Atlassian teams or people, and choose in the matrix who may edit flows, publish, force a move, manage agents and see the indicators. Process roles (QA, PO, …) say who receives assignments and approvals.
  2. Flows (required). Create one flow per work type, from a template or from scratch. Map statuses to stages, add what each stage requires, then Publish. A flow applies to the whole space or to some boards. Drafts take no cards, so you can try a flow first. Publishing in a company-managed space adds the app's validator ("Stagecraft — stage ready") to the workflow transitions into the stages that check something, and the page says on how many transitions it is in place. Only a Jira admin's publish changes the workflow (it can be shared with other spaces); if a maintainer publishes, the page asks a Jira admin to publish again. Team-managed spaces take no validator: flows there guide but do not block. Uninstalling the app takes the validator out again.
  3. Display in Jira (required for boards). Create the synced fields (current stage, pending items) and choose who sees the card panel and the badge next to Details. These settings hide or show the app's panel; Jira's permissions still decide who sees a card.
  4. Hierarchy (optional). Rules between levels, for example "an epic leaves Delivery only when its stories are done".
  5. Agents and Integrations (optional). AI agents and connected services, below.
  6. Templates (optional). Save a flow as a template and apply it to other spaces; linked flows can be updated when the template changes.

On the card

  • The Stagecraft panel shows the current stage, the trail of stages, what is ready and what is still missing, the approval waiting and the agent runs.
  • Mark checklist items (some ask for a link or an attachment as evidence).
  • Move to the next stage from the panel, or move the card as usual in Jira.
  • Force a move when allowed: give a reason; the admins can get a daily summary of forced moves.
  • Approvals: the live comment mentions the approver, who answers on the card.

AI agents

Agents help complete items and review cards. By default a person reviews an agent's answer before it counts. An admin can set an agent, or its use in a stage, to answer directly: the answer then goes into the card's activity comment and completes that agent's item without a review.

  • If the agent fails (Agents › an agent): hold the card (default), let another agent try once, hand the agent's item to a person who marks it on the card, or release the item when the agent could not run (its AI service down or unreachable, external services off, a Rovo rule that did not answer); the item then counts as done and is recorded on the card and in Permissions › Audit. An empty answer or a limit reached never releases it: the card's own text can cause those. For a Rovo agent whose rule runs on Stagecraft's request, no answer after about 30 minutes counts as a failure.
  • Rovo agents run inside Atlassian on your Rovo credits. Jira Automation runs them: create one rule per Rovo agent as shown in Agents › a Rovo agent › Connect it with Jira Automation (step-by-step, with the values to copy).
  • Your own AI service (through Portkey or your own endpoint) needs Integrations › Call services outside Atlassian to be on (a Jira admin decides) and your organization's key. Costs are billed by your provider, with a monthly limit per key and a limit per run.

Integrations

Off until a Jira admin turns on Call services outside Atlassian. Then: Portkey (AI gateway), GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket (branches and pull requests from a stage), n8n (workflows from a stage action), MCP servers (tools for agents) and Confluence on the same site (pages agents read and pages a stage drafts). Hosts only your organization knows (your own model endpoint, self-hosted n8n or MCP) are approved by a site admin in Integrations › Domains.

Indicators

Delivery (throughput, lead time), bottlenecks (cards aging in a stage, approvals waiting), process adherence (forced moves, items skipped), trends between periods and spaces, AI cost and platform health. Indicators follow the cards as they move, take a snapshot once a day, and list only the cards each viewer can see in Jira.

Languages

English, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Italian and French, following each person's Jira language.

License

Stagecraft is a paid app with a free trial. When the subscription or trial ends, Stagecraft stops: it no longer checks cards, runs actions or blocks moves, and every screen says so. Flows and settings are kept; subscribing again in Manage apps brings it back.

Data and privacy

Stagecraft stores its data in Atlassian's Forge storage in your site, keeps people by Atlassian account ID only, and reports those IDs to Atlassian every week. A closed account is replaced by "Closed account" and a fixed code. See the Privacy Policy.

Uninstall

A Jira admin uninstalls from Manage apps. Before it goes, the app takes its validator out of the workflows it changed; if a workflow still lists "Stagecraft — stage ready" afterwards, a Jira admin removes that rule in the workflow editor, because Jira refuses the moves of a rule whose app is gone. Jira keeps the comments the app posted. The synced fields stay as ordinary custom fields until an admin deletes them. Stagecraft's storage is removed by Atlassian.

Troubleshooting

  • A move is blocked and the panel says nothing is missing: open the card again; the hourly check recalculates cards whose move Jira did not report.
  • A Rovo agent stays "Waiting": the Automation rule is missing or off. See Agents › the agent.
  • An agent fails with "external services are off": a Jira admin must turn on Integrations › Call services outside Atlassian.
  • The synced fields are empty on a board: Display in Jira shows which work types still need the fields on their screens.

Support

See the Support page for the portal, the email and response times.