Kanban Pro vs Vibe Kanban, Two Boards for AI Coding Agents
Kanban Pro vs Vibe Kanban, Two Boards for AI Coding Agents
Vibe Kanban and Kanban Pro are the two best-known answers to the same question: how do you manage AI coding agents from a Kanban board instead of a pile of terminal windows? Both put tickets in columns, both launch real agentic CLIs such as Claude Code and Codex, and both keep the human in the review seat.
They answer the question from opposite directions. Vibe Kanban is an orchestration layer for parallel coding runs: tasks are prompts, and the board exists to fan work out to agents and merge the results back as pull requests. Kanban Pro is a project manager first: the board is durable Markdown on disk, the long-lived source of truth for a project, and agents are teammates who work from those same tickets inside embedded terminals.
This comparison is technical, not promotional. Vibe Kanban is a genuinely impressive piece of engineering with a large community. But there is also a practical development that anyone evaluating the two tools in 2026 needs to know about first.
The bloop Shutdown, and What It Means
On 10 April 2026, bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban, announced it was shutting down. In the words of the announcement on the Vibe Kanban blog: "Today we're shutting down bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban. The project will live on as open source and community maintained." The project's GitHub README now carries a notice that Vibe Kanban is sunsetting.
To be clear about what this does and does not mean:
- The code remains available. Vibe Kanban is Apache-2.0 licensed open source with roughly 27,000 GitHub stars, and the repository stays online.
- There is no longer a company behind it. Future maintenance, security fixes, and compatibility updates with fast-moving agent CLIs depend on community volunteers.
- Company-operated remote services are winding down, and the project's future pace is uncertain in the way any newly community-maintained project is.
Kanban Pro, by contrast, is actively developed by Good Guy Apps, ships regular releases through its public changelog, and its free Early Access has passed 4.1k downloads, reaching #1 on r/MacApps in July 2026. Maintenance status is not a feature comparison, but for a tool that sits between you and your coding agents every day, it is a legitimate selection criterion.
What Each Tool Was Designed For
Vibe Kanban's design centre is parallel agent execution on a codebase. You write a task, dispatch it to one of 10+ supported coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, and others), and Vibe Kanban provisions an isolated Git worktree so multiple agents can work simultaneously without conflicts. You review diffs, leave comments, preview the app in a built-in browser, and raise a pull request. It runs as a local web app launched with npx vibe-kanban, with a Rust backend and a TypeScript/React frontend.
Kanban Pro's design centre is the durable project board. A board is a folder of plain Markdown ticket files with YAML frontmatter, stored wherever you choose on your own disk. Columns, custom fields, sprints, and epics are structured data that both humans and agents read and write. Agents attach to tickets through embedded terminals inside the app: each per-ticket terminal launches a real agentic CLI (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor Agent, aider, Amp, OpenCode, Antigravity, Goose), auto-briefed with a generated KP-CONTEXT.md covering the active ticket, its neighbours, the board columns, and the project rules. Sessions persist on disk under .kanban/sessions/ and can be resumed later. It is a free desktop app for macOS and Windows, with no account and no server.
The shapes differ. Vibe Kanban treats the ticket as a dispatch envelope for a coding run; when the PR merges, the task's job is done. Kanban Pro treats the ticket as a persistent unit of project state: it existed before the agent was invoked, records the agent's work in its activity trail, and remains the record of the decision afterwards.
Where the Architectures Diverge
Task Lifespan: Dispatch Envelope Versus Durable Record
In Vibe Kanban, tasks exist to be executed. The natural unit is the coding run: prompt in, worktree out, diff reviewed, PR raised. That is exactly right for burning down a backlog of code changes with a fleet of agents.
In Kanban Pro, tickets exist to hold project state over time. They carry typed fields, links between tickets, subtasks, sprint and epic assignments, and a modification history. Agent work is one chapter in a ticket's life, not the whole of it. That is exactly right when the board is the plan, the audit trail, and the shared memory for a team of humans and agents.
Data Layer: Application Store Versus Plain Files on Disk
Vibe Kanban runs as a local web service and manages its task state internally; you interact through its browser UI and its Git integration.
Kanban Pro's entire data layer is human-readable files. Every ticket is a Markdown file you can open in any editor, grep, back up, or sync over iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any file share. Any agent with filesystem access can read and write the board directly, with no API and no running service. If you stop using Kanban Pro tomorrow, your tickets are still just Markdown.
Scope: Coding Tasks Versus Whole Projects
Vibe Kanban is purpose-built for software tasks on a Git repository. Its worktree isolation, diff review, and PR flow assume the deliverable is code.
Kanban Pro manages anything a board can hold: coding tickets alongside marketing plans, research notes, and operational runbooks, across Board, List, Table, Calendar, Notes, and Gantt views over the same files, localised into 39 languages. Coding agents plug into the tickets that need them; the rest of the board is unaffected.
Distribution: npx Web App Versus Signed Desktop App
Vibe Kanban launches with npx vibe-kanban and opens in your browser. That is a friction-free start for developers who live in a terminal.
Kanban Pro ships as a signed, notarised desktop app for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and a signed Windows installer, downloaded from GitHub Releases. No Node toolchain required, no localhost service to keep running, and the app works fully offline.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Dimension | Vibe Kanban | Kanban Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Orchestrate parallel coding-agent runs | Local-first project manager with embedded agent terminals |
| Maintenance status | Community-maintained; bloop shut down April 2026 | Actively developed by Good Guy Apps |
| Ticket data | Managed by the local web service | One Markdown file per ticket, on your disk |
| Agent execution | Isolated Git worktrees per task, parallel runs | Embedded per-ticket terminals running real CLIs |
| Agent briefing | Task prompt | Auto-generated KP-CONTEXT.md (ticket, neighbours, columns, rules) |
| Session persistence | Per-run | Sessions persist under .kanban/sessions/, resumable |
| Code review | Built-in diff review, comments, PR creation | Through the agent CLI and your normal Git tooling |
| Non-coding work | Not the target use case | Views, custom fields, sprints, epics, Gantt, calendar |
| Runs as | Local web app via npx vibe-kanban | Signed desktop app, macOS and Windows |
| Price and licence | Free, Apache-2.0 open source | Free during Early Access, no account, no subscription |
| Offline | Local-first | 100% local, no server component at all |
Which Tool for Which Job
Choose Vibe Kanban if your workload is a queue of well-scoped code changes on a Git repository and you want to run several agents in parallel with clean worktree isolation and a PR-centric review loop, and you are comfortable adopting a community-maintained project.
Choose Kanban Pro if you want one durable board for the whole project, where tickets outlive individual coding runs, humans and agents share the same Markdown source of truth, and agent sessions launch from the ticket they belong to with full context. It is also the natural home for teams who need project management beyond code: fields, sprints, epics, calendars, and Gantt timelines over the same files.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Kanban Pro tickets are plain files on disk, so nothing stops a team from planning in Kanban Pro and dispatching selected tickets to any executor they like.
Migrating From Vibe Kanban
If the bloop shutdown has you evaluating alternatives, the move to Kanban Pro is low-ceremony because there is no import lock-in on either side of it. Recreate your open tasks as Markdown tickets (each is a small text file with YAML frontmatter; the format is documented in the README Kanban Pro generates inside every board folder), point the board folder at your repo or alongside it, and launch your existing CLI of choice from each ticket's embedded terminal. Your agents keep working with the same tools; the board around them becomes plain files you own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Vibe Kanban shutting down?
The company behind it is gone; the project is not. On 10 April 2026 bloop announced it was shutting down and that Vibe Kanban "will live on as open source and community maintained." The Apache-2.0 code remains on GitHub, but there is no longer a company shipping releases, and the README carries a sunsetting notice.
Is Kanban Pro open source like Vibe Kanban?
No. Kanban Pro is a free desktop app during Early Access, with no subscription and no account. What is fully open is your data: every ticket is a plain Markdown file on your own disk, readable and writable by any tool or agent, with no export step needed.
Can Kanban Pro run Claude Code and Codex like Vibe Kanban does?
Yes. Kanban Pro embeds per-ticket terminals that launch real agentic CLIs natively, including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor Agent, aider, Amp, OpenCode, Antigravity, and Goose. Each session is auto-briefed with a generated KP-CONTEXT.md and persists on disk for later resume.
Does Kanban Pro isolate agent runs in Git worktrees?
Worktree provisioning is the agent CLI's job in Kanban Pro, not the board's. Tools like Claude Code can create worktrees themselves when asked. What Kanban Pro guarantees structurally is conflict-free board state: one Markdown file per ticket means concurrent agents editing different tickets never collide.
Which is better for non-coding work?
Kanban Pro. Vibe Kanban is built specifically for coding tasks on a Git repository. Kanban Pro is a general project manager with Board, List, Table, Calendar, Notes, and Gantt views, custom fields, sprints, and epics, so coding tickets and everything else share one board.
For how the ticket-as-context model works in practice, read Run Claude Code from Kanban Tickets and The Agent Memory Layer. Kanban Pro is free on macOS and Windows.