kanbanr
A kanban board that is the system of record for Claude-driven development. Claude manages it
through a skill that drives the kanbanr CLI, and a read-only web monitor
shows what is happening live while you work.
The CLI writes the local data folder directly — the single writer, no server, no login.
kanbanr serveruns a read-only view daemon over the same folder, with the monitor built into the binary. Sharing happens through a git remote. It is one binary, and Docker is optional.
Why this exists
An AI agent doing real project work needs a durable, external system of record — not an in-session scratchpad. Without one, the plan, the reasoning and the evidence live only in a transcript: they vanish between sessions, cannot be reviewed, and work gets built that nobody agreed to.
kanbanr keeps all of it in plain, git-backed files a human can read, and makes Claude keep it current as part of doing the work rather than as an afterthought.
What it commits to — work items link these by id:
| G-1 | A session recovers the full plan and continues, with no human recap |
| G-2 | Every work item records why it exists and how it will be verified |
| G-3 | Nothing substantial gets built before its reasoning is agreed |
| G-4 | Any line of code can be traced back to the requirement and goal it serves |
| G-5 | The tool stays low-friction enough that it is never worth bypassing |
| G-0 | The system stays operable and maintainable |
| G-6 | What is installed is what was built, and can be shown to be |
Where to start
- Installation — one command; the monitor is in the binary.
- Set up in 60 seconds — a board, from nothing.
- How the pieces fit — the CLI, the daemon and the data folder.
- The method — why an item exists, and what proves it done.
Constraints it works under
- Local-first: plain YAML and markdown in a git repo. No database, no accounts, no server required.
- The CLI is the single writer; the web monitor is read-only.
- Sharing happens through a git remote, which is also the access boundary.
- One binary, installable without a toolchain.
- Raw data is never discarded — it is captured as files and kept. Every summary, count and report is derived from it.