Agent-native kanban
The board your coding agents can run
Kanbento is a kanban board that lives in your repo as plain files — no database, no server, nothing to log into. Your agents read the guide, pull the next card, respect the gates, and every move appends to an immutable log.
A board that behaves like the rest of your codebase
It's just files
The board is Markdown and JSON under `.kanbento/`, operated by a CLI. Commit it next to your code, diff it in a PR, roll it back like anything else.
Structure you earn
Start with a bare pool. Add a stage, a WIP limit, or a gate only when the flow proves it needs one — never on a hunch.
An immutable log
Every move is an appended event, so state is a replay. Each change is auditable, and reversible by appending its inverse.
How work moves
Capture
Options are cheap. Drop proposals into the pool, where everything is discardable — the bar to create is low, the bar to commit stays high.
Commit
Rank the whole pool by value and pull the best fit across the Definition of Ready gate, into free WIP — not the oldest, the best.
Flow
Drive the card through active work and review. A failed check loops it back; WIP limits keep the pipeline honest.
Deliver
Cross the Definition of Done. Value out and options in stay balanced — the board's heartbeat keeps the pool from bloating or starving.
Options are cheap · the gate is the filter
The pool is a buffer, the commitment point is the filter
Left of the commitment point, everything is a proposal to exist — capture liberally, groom continuously, discard freely. Right of it, the bar is high: only value-ranked, gate-passing work gets pulled and worked. That asymmetry is the whole design.
Questions
Is this a SaaS?
No. Kanbento is a CLI plus a folder of files in your repo. There’s nothing to host and nothing to log into.
Do I need agents to use it?
No — the verbs work for humans too. But the board is designed so an agent can operate it end to end from AGENTS.md and BOARD.md.
What if I outgrow the structure?
You evolve it. Edit the manifest to add a stage or tighten a WIP limit, then reconcile — in-flight cards re-place automatically and the baseline re-bases. Nothing is stranded.
Where does the state live?
In an append-only event log. BOARD.md and the other views are read-models that regenerate from it, so the log is the single source of truth.
Start with a bare pool
Install the CLI, capture your first option, and let the board grow only when your flow earns it.