vibe-kanban is a free, open source project & work management project written in Rust and released under Apache-2.0. It has 28,112 GitHub stars, 3,013 forks and 540 open issues, and was last pushed 15 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #1 of 62 tracked projects in Project & Work Management, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 23 stars over the last 3 tracked days.

What is vibe-kanban?

Vibe Kanban is an open-source, Apache-2.0 kanban board written in Rust that lets software engineers plan work as issues and hand each issue to a coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or Amp inside an isolated workspace.

What it is

Vibe Kanban is a task manager and execution surface for agentic coding tools. It combines a kanban board for creating, prioritising and assigning issues with "workspaces" — one workspace per piece of work, each giving an agent its own git branch, a terminal and a dev server. The project ships as a Rust backend plus a web front end, and it runs locally from a single command or as a self-hosted instance. Its topic list names the domain plainly: agent, ai-agents, kanban, management, task-manager. Licence is Apache-2.0, and the repository carries 28,104 stars and 3,008 forks.

The concrete problem it solves is the friction of planning and reviewing agent output. The README argues that when engineers spend most of their time planning and reviewing coding agents, faster planning and review is what ships more work. Instead of juggling agent sessions, branches and terminals by hand, the board holds the plan and each workspace holds the execution context. Diffs can be reviewed with inline comments that go straight back to the agent without leaving the interface, and finished work becomes a pull request with an AI-generated description that is reviewed on GitHub and merged. One caveat sits at the top of the README: Vibe Kanban is sunsetting, and an announcement is linked from the project.

Key capabilities

  • Plan with kanban issues — create, prioritise and assign issues on a board, used privately or with a team.
  • Run coding agents in workspaces — each workspace gives an agent a branch, a terminal and a dev server.
  • Review diffs and leave inline comments, sending feedback directly to the agent from the same UI.
  • Preview the app in a built-in browser with devtools, inspect mode and device emulation.
  • Switch between 10 or more agents: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, CCR and Qwen Code.
  • Create pull requests with AI-generated descriptions, review on GitHub, then merge.
  • Launch with one command, npx vibe-kanban, after authenticating a supported coding agent.

Who uses it and how

  • Individual engineers running several agents in parallel, where each workspace isolates the agent on its own branch and DISABLE_WORKTREE_CLEANUP controls orphan and expired workspace cleanup.
  • Small teams using kanban issues as a shared plan before opening workspaces for execution.
  • Operators self-hosting their own Vibe Kanban Cloud instance, following the Docker deploy guide.
  • Contributors building from source, which requires Rust (latest stable), Node.js 20 or later and pnpm 8 or later, with pnpm i and pnpm run dev, ./local-build.sh on macOS, and cd npx-cli && node bin/cli.js for testing.
  • Users feeding back through GitHub Discussions for feature requests, GitHub issues for bugs and the project Discord.

Getting started

Authenticate with a supported coding agent, then run npx vibe-kanban in a terminal. Self-hosters can deploy their own instance using the Docker guide at vibekanban.com/docs/self-hosting/deploy-docker.

How it compares

No comparable paid products are listed in the facts for this registry, and no similar tools are named either, so Vibe Kanban stands alone here. It is Apache-2.0 licensed and self-hostable, which leaves data ownership and hosting with the operator rather than a vendor.

When to use it — and when not to

Pick it if the workflow of planning on a board and reviewing agent diffs in one place matches how a team works, and if someone can operate the stack: the dev and self-hosted paths involve a Rust and Node build, a database seeded from dev_assets_seed, an MCP server with MCP_HOST and MCP_PORT, host and port configuration, and optional PostHog analytics keyed by POSTHOG_API_KEY and POSTHOG_API_ENDPOINT. Avoid it if the project needs a long-lived, actively developed dependency, because the README states Vibe Kanban is sunsetting and points to an announcement. The 540 open issues and the sunset notice are the honest restraints on adopting it for new work.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Get 10X more out of Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, Amp and other coding agents...

npm Build status Ask DeepWiki

Vibe Kanban is sunsetting. Read the announcement.

Overview

In a world where software engineers spend most of their time planning and reviewing coding agents, the most impactful way to ship more is to get faster at planning and review.

Vibe Kanban is built for this. Use kanban issues to plan work, either privately or with your team. When you're ready to begin, create workspaces where coding agents can execute.

  • Plan with kanban issues — create, prioritise, and assign issues on a kanban board
  • Run coding agents in workspaces — each workspace gives an agent a branch, a terminal, and a dev server
  • Review diffs and leave inline comments — send feedback directly to the agent without leaving the UI
  • Preview your app — built-in browser with devtools, inspect mode, and device emulation
  • Switch between 10+ coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, CCR, and Qwen Code
  • Create pull requests and merge — open PRs with AI-generated descriptions, review on GitHub, and merge

One command. Describe the work, review the diff, ship it.

npx vibe-kanban

Installation

Make sure you have authenticated with your favourite coding agent. A full list of supported coding agents can be found in the docs. Then in your terminal run:

npx vibe-kanban

Documentation

Head to the website for the latest documentation and user guides.

Self-Hosting

Want to host your own Vibe Kanban Cloud instance? See our self-hosting guide.

Support

We use GitHub Discussions for feature requests. Please open a discussion to create a feature request. For bugs please open an issue on this repo.

Contributing

We would prefer that ideas and changes are first raised with the core team via GitHub Discussions or Discord, where we can discuss implementation details and alignment with the existing roadmap. Please do not open PRs without first discussing your proposal with the team.

Development

Prerequisites

Additional development tools:

cargo install cargo-watch
cargo install sqlx-cli

Install dependencies:

pnpm i

Running the dev server

pnpm run dev

This will start the backend and web app. A blank DB will be copied from the dev_assets_seed folder.

Building the web app

To build just the web app:

cd packages/local-web
pnpm run build

Build from source (macOS)

  1. Run ./local-build.sh
  2. Test with cd npx-cli && node bin/cli.js

Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be configured at build time or runtime:

Variable Type Default Description
POSTHOG_API_KEY Build-time Empty PostHog analytics API key (disables analytics if empty)
POSTHOG_API_ENDPOINT Build-time Empty PostHog analytics endpoint (disables analytics if empty)
PORT Runtime Auto-assign Production: Server port. Dev: Frontend port (backend uses PORT+1)
BACKEND_PORT Runtime 0 (auto-assign) Backend server port (dev mode only, overrides PORT+1)
FRONTEND_PORT Runtime 3000 Frontend dev server port (dev mode only, overrides PORT)
HOST Runtime 127.0.0.1 Backend server host
MCP_HOST Runtime Value of HOST MCP server connection host (use 127.0.0.1 when HOST=0.0.0.0 on Windows)
MCP_PORT Runtime Value of BACKEND_PORT MCP server connection port
DISABLE_WORKTREE_CLEANUP Runtime Not set Disable all git worktree cleanup including orphan and expired workspace cleanup (for debugging)
VK_ALLOWED_ORIGINS Runtime Not set Comma-separated list of origins that are allowed to make backend API requests (e.g., https://my-vibekanban-frontend.com)
VK_SHARED_API_BASE Runtime Not set Base URL for the remote/cloud API used by the local desktop app
VK_SHARED_RELAY_API_BASE Runtime Not set Base URL for the relay API used by tunnel-mode connections
VK_TUNNEL Runtime Not set Enable relay tunnel mode when set (requires relay API base URL)

Build-time variables must be set when running pnpm run build. Runtime variables are read when the application starts.

Self-Hosting with a Reverse Proxy or Custom Domain

When running Vibe Kanban behind a reverse proxy (e.g., nginx, Caddy, Traefik) or on a custom domain, you must set the VK_ALLOWED_ORIGINS environment variable. Without this, the browser's Origin header won't match the backend's expected host, and API requests will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden error.

Set it to the full origin URL(s) where your frontend is accessible:

# Single origin
VK_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://vk.example.com

# Multiple origins (comma-separated)
VK_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://vk.example.com,https://vk-staging.example.com

Remote Deployment

When running Vibe Kanban on a remote server (e.g., via systemctl, Docker, or cloud hosting), you can configure your editor to open projects via SSH:

  1. Access via tunnel: Use Cloudflare Tunnel, ngrok, or similar to expose the web UI
  2. Configure remote SSH in Settings → Editor Integration:
    • Set Remote SSH Host to your server hostname or IP
    • Set Remote SSH User to your SSH username (optional)
  3. Prerequisites:
    • SSH access from your local machine to the remote server
    • SSH keys configured (passwordless authentication)
    • VSCode Remote-SSH extension

When configured, the "Open in VSCode" buttons will generate URLs like vscode://vscode-remote/ssh-remote+user@host/path that open your local editor and connect to the remote server.

See the documentation for detailed setup instructions.

Frequently asked questions

Is vibe-kanban free to use?

vibe-kanban is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does vibe-kanban do?

Get 10X more out of Claude Code, Codex or any coding agent

What is vibe-kanban written in?

vibe-kanban is primarily written in Rust. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/BloopAI/vibe-kanban, and it has 28,112 GitHub stars.