Moving off ClickUp without rebuilding: import a list, check the counts, move

Here is how leaving ClickUp in one weekend can go. Someone exports everything, the statuses come out wrong, half the comments are missing, a client still sends requests to the old board, and by Wednesday the team works in both tools and trusts neither.

Tengu is built so you never have to do that. You don't rebuild anything: you import one list at a time, check that everything arrived, and move the team on that list when it's ready. This post covers what the importer brings over, how to check its work, and how to decide when a list is ready to move.

The importer is on every plan, Free included.

The importer

Importing copies one ClickUp list into Tengu, whole. An admin connects ClickUp, so Tengu can read the list with their ClickUp account, then picks the list and what comes along:

• open quests only, or
• open quests plus those closed in the last 3, 6 or 12 months.

It brings the tasks page by page, subtasks included, with every assignee. Then it goes back for each task's comments and attachments, and copies the files ClickUp keeps (attachments, and images pasted into descriptions and comments) into Tengu, up to 25 MB each, so they still open after you leave ClickUp. Bigger ones stay links to ClickUp. A list imported before files were copied has a "Copy files into Tengu" action.

It finishes even if you close the tab

The importer stays under ClickUp's API rate limit, so a big list takes a while: about 500 quests take several minutes. It works in small steps. While the page is open it steps every few seconds. When the page is closed, a background job keeps stepping it. A timeout or a rate limit just pauses it. If it stops on an error, importing again picks it back up, and re-running updates quests in place instead of duplicating them.

Importing is silent. Nobody gets a notification and nobody earns XP, because no work actually moved.

IDs stay the same

Imported quests keep their ClickUp IDs as their Tengu IDs. Links your team pasted in Slack still resolve, and an agent that already knows a task's ID keeps working through the Agent API.

Check the counts

When the import finishes, Tengu shows the quests per status that ClickUp reported beside the quests per status Tengu now holds. Tengu can hold more than ClickUp sent, because quests closed before your import window stay. It should never hold fewer. Any quest whose comments or attachments didn't come is listed by name, with the reason.

Check those numbers before you move anyone. It takes a minute and it is the step that builds trust with the people who still doubt the move.

The statuses come with the list

Retraining slows a migration down, so Tengu does not ask for any. Imported lists keep their ClickUp statuses, order and colours; an admin gives each a role once. The status menu shows them under the same Statuses and Closed headings. The ▸ button moves a quest to the next status. The ✓ marks it done.

The roles are Available, Started, In review, Sent back, Done, Shipping, Live and Closed. Tengu's triggers read the role, never the status name, so "QA Ready" on one list and "In Review" on another both feed the same review queue.

When to move

A list is ready to move when all of these are true:

1. The import counts match ClickUp, status by status.
2. Nobody who works on the list needs to keep working on it in ClickUp. Ask; don't guess.
3. Any client who works on that list in ClickUp as a guest has been invited to it in Tengu. Client guests are free on Board and Studio: they see the lists you share with them, comment and file requests, but can't move, assign or edit tickets.
4. No automation, integration or report you depend on reads that ClickUp list.

When you move a list, everyone with a quest in it gets an inbox notice: "Northwind / Billing now lives only in Tengu." ClickUp's copy stays as it was the moment you moved, so nothing is lost.

What stays in ClickUp for now

Tengu is a board for delivery work, not a copy of ClickUp. Docs, and anything else your team builds outside of tasks, stay where they are. Tengu has no custom fields of its own and no mobile app yet. If a list depends on one of these, keep that list in ClickUp.

Linear and Jira too

Tengu imports a Linear team, or one project in it, and a Jira Cloud project the same way: in steps, silently, with the same count check. Linear takes a personal API key; Jira takes your site address, your Atlassian email and an API token, and Tengu deletes either one when the import stops. Each import makes a new list. Issues keep their Linear or Jira keys, statuses go to the matching step of the list's flow, people are matched to members by email, and files are copied into Tengu. Jira's descriptions and comments are converted to Markdown.

A good first list

Pick an internal engineering list, a handful of developers and a PM who is curious. Import it with six months of closed quests, check the counts, and run it in Tengu for two weeks. By then you will know whether the second list should follow.