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Kanban CLI (A local-first, agent-first task manager for the terminal)

Details

External ID
48256520
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Kanban CLI (A local-first, agent-first task manager for the terminal)
Website domain
codeberg.org
Launched
May 24, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
17
Upvotes percentile
0.7140549273021002
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hello HN,Ever since agents have become increasingly common in development, I've been scratching my head as to how to control their randomness. Recently, I decided to emulate an issue-tracking and project-management tool for agent-driven workflows.Kanban is a Rust-based coordination layer designed to provide a feature-rich terminal interface and enforce rigorous workflows. It aims to be versatile and extendable, made to be tailored to any preferred flow. It comes with full git integration and guardrails such that only what truly benefits a project can go through.The workflow boils down to 4 steps:1. The model reads the skill to contextualize the requirements2. It authenticates and receives a strict, schema-validated JSON payload outlining exact files, context, and acceptance criteria3. Implementation is performed within an automatically isolated Git worktree and branch. The tool tracks progress (e.g., verifying all files were edited) before the task is submitted for review4. A reviewer (preferably a human) evaluates the submission and manually transitions the task to "Done," which triggers the final merge and cleans up the task-specific environment.The tool significantly decreases the agent development time, while increasing the human planning phase.There is more to it than I can cover here, so I'd be happy to answer any questions about the architecture, the workflow, or the insights I gained while using it. For more information, I recommend skimming the README, which acts as an index to all documentation files.Repo: https://codeberg.org/hydrafog/kanban

Enrichment

Theme
AI agent frameworks and developer tools
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Agent / copilot
Audience
Developer
AI stance
AI feature
Project type
Commercial product
Normalized one-liner
terminal task manager with agent support
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Yes It is a local terminal-based Kanban task manager CLI that stores structured data (JSON/YAML/SQLite) and provides programmatic interfaces for LLM agents.

Discussion

13 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Cline Kanban (web UI agent execution platform), GitHub (for project coordination)

Concerns raised: Developer preference for GUI over CLI in AI era, Browser interface would add unnecessary bloat and maintenance complexity

Feature requests: Audit log with reasoning for changes (why did this change), Visual GUI interface (though acknowledged as potential trade-off)

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 391 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #132 of 392 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 201 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a agent / copilot tool for Agriculture yet.