{"id":52945,"date":"2026-08-19T16:47:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T20:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=52945"},"modified":"2026-08-19T16:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T20:47:24","slug":"jira-is-turing-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/19\/jira-is-turing-complete\/","title":{"rendered":"Jira Is Turing-Complete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/seriot.ch\/computation\/jira.html\">Nicolas Seriot<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=48263253\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/seriot.ch\/computation\/jira.html\">\n<p>Engineering folklore <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=17689446\">holds<\/a> that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atlassian.com\/software\/jira\">Jira<\/a> (Atlassian&rsquo;s project-tracking tool) is <a href=\"https:\/\/esolangs.org\/wiki\/Turing-complete\">Turing-complete<\/a>.\nExisting claims point vaguely at automation features without exhibiting a reduction.\nThis article supplies a proof, with setup instructions and execution trace.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marvin_Minsky\">Minsky<\/a> proved this model Turing-complete (1967).\nExhibiting it in Jira&rsquo;s automation language therefore establishes the reduction.\nHere is how the model maps onto Jira:<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Minsky&nbsp;Machine<\/th>\n<th>Jira<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Register A<\/td>\n<td>Count of linked issues of type <strong>Bug<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Register B<\/td>\n<td>Count of linked issues of type <strong>Task<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Program Counter<\/td>\n<td>Status of a single <strong>Epic<\/strong> issue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Dispatch Table<\/td>\n<td>Jira Automation rules, one per instruction state<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Clock<\/td>\n<td>Automation-triggered transitions, or external re-triggering past chain caps<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicolas Seriot (Hacker News): Engineering folklore holds that Jira (Atlassian&rsquo;s project-tracking tool) is Turing-complete. Existing claims point vaguely at automation features without exhibiting a reduction. This article supplies a proof, with setup instructions and execution trace. [&#8230;] Minsky proved this model Turing-complete (1967). Exhibiting it in Jira&rsquo;s automation language therefore establishes the reduction. Here is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-08-19T20:47:30Z","apple_news_api_id":"4a95f7e6-b821-419f-a08b-e2f2a194d5d8","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-08-19T20:47:31Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ASpX35rghQZ-gi-LyoZTV2A","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[263,2616,523,71],"class_list":["post-52945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming-category","tag-theory","tag-fun-hack","tag-jira","tag-programming"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52946,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52945\/revisions\/52946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}