kanban

Claude Kanban Skill

A small self-hosted kanban board for Claude Code, bundled with a Go HTTP server and a drag-and-drop frontend. State persists to a JSON file. No database, no dependencies, no external services.

The skill lets Claude add, move, list, and delete cards on the board for you, while you drag them around in a browser.

Five columns, fixed

To Do · Blocked · In Progress · In Review · Done

Installation

From the Claude Code command line (recommended)

Register this repo as a plugin marketplace, then install:

/plugin marketplace add mdodkins/claude-kanban-skill
/plugin install kanban@mdodkins-kanban

Manual installation

Copy the skill file into your personal skills folder:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/kanban
cp skills/kanban/SKILL.md ~/.claude/skills/kanban/SKILL.md

You'll also need the Go server (next section).

Running the server

The server is a single Go binary in server/. It embeds its own static frontend.

cd server
go build -o kanban .
./kanban --listen 127.0.0.1:8765 --state ~/.kanban/state.json

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8765/ in your browser. The state file is created on first write.

Flags:

Flag	Default	What
--listen	127.0.0.1:8765	host:port to bind
--state	~/.kanban/state.json	JSON state file path

HTTP API

For when you (or Claude) want to script the board:

GET    /api/cards               list all cards
POST   /api/cards               create card (JSON: title, description, column)
PATCH  /api/cards/{id}          sparse update (any subset of fields)
DELETE /api/cards/{id}          remove card

Column IDs (use these literally): to-do, blocked, in-progress, in-review, done.

Running as a systemd service

Optional. Useful if you want the board running 24/7 on a server.

sudo useradd --system --no-create-home --shell /usr/sbin/nologin kanban
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/kanban
sudo chown kanban:kanban /var/lib/kanban
sudo cp server/kanban /usr/local/bin/
sudo cp server/kanban.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now kanban

State file

Plain JSON, one array of cards. Safe to back up, edit by hand (when the server is stopped), or commit to git if the cards aren't sensitive.

License

Whatever the parent project license is. (TBD; assume MIT for now unless the owner says otherwise.)