Kanban CLI (A local-first, agent-first task manager for the terminal)
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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
HN · launched May 24, 2026 · 17 upvotes (top 29%) · 0 views
Niche: command line productivity tools · 82 launches, 0 in the last 7 days ▼ -100% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Workflow automation
- Developer
- AI feature
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 82 launches in command line productivity tools →
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 : 1081 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #385 of 1082 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 206 days after the earliest competitor.
- Kanban-md · hn · 2026-02-10 · 19 upvotes · similarity 0.72
- VS Code Agent Kanban: Task Management for the AI-Assisted Developer · hn · 2026-03-09 · 99 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- Agent Kanban · ph · 2026-11-10 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- Mission Control · hn · 2026-02-26 · 45 upvotes · similarity 0.58
- AgentKanban for VS Code · hn · 2026-05-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Kanban-CLI · hn · 2026-05-05 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- Source · ph · 2026-11-08 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Agentastic.dev is Ghostty and Git worktrees = multi-agent CC/Codex IDE · hn · 2026-01-05 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.52
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