What is Vibe Kanban?
Vibe Kanban's maker, bloop, shut down on 10 April 2026. The project stays open source and community-maintained, its cloud features (shared issues, comments, projects and organisations) were switched off after 30 days, and the app has moved to a fully local design. The last tagged release is v0.1.44 from 24 April 2026, though commits continued into October 2026.
It is a local web app, started with npx vibe-kanban, for planning work as kanban issues and handing each one to a coding agent. Every workspace gives the agent its own branch, terminal and dev server. You review the diff, leave inline comments that go back to the agent, preview the app in a built-in browser with devtools and device emulation, and open a pull request with an AI-written description. It works with more than 10 agents, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid and Qwen Code.
It is written in Rust with a TypeScript front end and licensed under Apache-2.0.
Is Vibe Kanban worth it?
Vibe Kanban had the right idea and lost the business behind it. Its premise is that engineers now spend most of their time planning work for coding agents and reviewing what comes back, so it puts both on one screen: a kanban board of issues, a workspace per issue with its own branch, terminal and dev server, and a diff view whose inline comments go straight back to the agent. With 28,468 GitHub stars it was one of the most widely used tools of its kind.
On 10 April 2026 bloop, the company behind it, shut down. Its announcement says thousands of engineers used Vibe Kanban daily but the vast majority were free users and it could not find a business model. The team features that justified a board, shared issues, comments, projects and organisations, were removed after 30 days, and paying subscribers were refunded. What remains is a single-user local app.
The repository is not dead, but it is quiet. The last tagged release and npm package is v0.1.44 from 24 April 2026, which bumped the pinned Claude Code and Codex versions and added the data-export page. Ten commits landed in September and two in October 2026, including a Copilot fix, but no new version has shipped, so the npx install still pulls April's build. Agent CLIs change monthly, and pinned versions in a tool nobody is paid to update tend to drift.
Two details matter for a company. Product analytics go to PostHog unless you opt out in settings; the source tracks events unless the user has explicitly opted out. And the Apache-2.0 licence is permissive, so forking it is a real option. Orca covers the same parallel-worktree job with active releases, and Claude Squad covers the minimal terminal version.
Where it earns its place
A solo developer shipping a side project with Claude Code
Queue a week of small tasks and review each agent's diff before merging
Run npx vibe-kanban, write each task as an issue, start a workspace per issue and send review comments from the diff view. The app is free; parallel workspaces multiply your Claude Code token use.
A frontend engineer at a 10-person agency
Check an agent's UI change without leaving the review screen
Each workspace starts its own dev server, and the built-in browser has inspect mode and device emulation, so you check the change on a phone-sized viewport and send fixes back as comments.
An engineering lead who used Vibe Kanban Cloud for a team board
Keep the team's agent workflow after the cloud shutdown
Shared boards are gone, so export issues with the data-export page and move planning to GitHub or Linear. Teams that want shared agent workspaces should look at Orca, which is actively released and MIT-licensed.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Sign in to your coding agent first, then run npx vibe-kanban; it starts a local server and opens the board. Building from source needs Rust, Node.js 20 or later and pnpm.
- Integrations
- More than 10 coding agents, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, CCR and Qwen Code; GitHub for pull requests.
- Data and privacy
- Runs locally; code and prompts go to the agent providers you use. Official builds send product analytics to PostHog unless you opt out in settings, and builds compiled without a PostHog key send none.
- Cost at scale
- The software is free; cost is your agents' subscriptions or API usage, multiplied by the number of parallel workspaces.
- Limits
- No release since April 2026, so pinned agent CLI versions may lag; contributors are asked to discuss changes in GitHub Discussions or Discord before opening pull requests; team features no longer exist.
What's good
- Kanban issues, per-task workspaces and diff review in one local app
- Inline diff comments go back to the agent
- Built-in browser preview with devtools and device emulation
- Works with more than 10 coding agents
- Permissive Apache-2.0 licence makes forking practical
What's not
- Company shut down in April 2026; community-maintained since
- Team and cloud features removed
- No tagged release or npm version since 24 April 2026
- Analytics on unless you opt out
Best for
Solo developers who like planning agent work on a board and are comfortable running, or forking, a community-maintained tool.
Vibe Kanban alternatives
Vibe Kanban: common questions
- Is Vibe Kanban worth it?
- Vibe Kanban still works well as a local board for agent tasks, but with its company gone and no release since April, it is a risky thing to build a team habit on. We rate it 3.4 out of 5.
- How much does Vibe Kanban cost?
- Free and open source under Apache-2.0. Paid cloud subscriptions ended when bloop shut down in April 2026; you bring your own agent subscriptions or API keys.
- What are the downsides of Vibe Kanban?
- Company shut down in April 2026; community-maintained since; team and cloud features removed; no tagged release or npm version since 24 April 2026; analytics on unless you opt out.
- Who is Vibe Kanban best for?
- Solo developers who like planning agent work on a board and are comfortable running, or forking, a community-maintained tool.
- How much does Vibe Kanban cost for a team or in production?
- The software is free; cost is your agents' subscriptions or API usage, multiplied by the number of parallel workspaces.
- Is Vibe Kanban safe for company data?
- Runs locally; code and prompts go to the agent providers you use. Official builds send product analytics to PostHog unless you opt out in settings, and builds compiled without a PostHog key send none.
- What are the best Vibe Kanban alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Orca, Claude Squad and OpenCode.
Answers checked Oct 26, 2026.