Run Claude Code from Kanban Tickets

Run Claude Code from Kanban Tickets

Most teams that adopt AI coding agents hit the same wall: the agent is capable, but every session starts cold. You paste in the task, re-explain the project, re-state the conventions, and hope you remembered everything. The task description lives in one tool, the agent runs in another, and nothing connects them.

Kanban Pro closes that gap by making the ticket itself the place where the agent runs. Every ticket on the board can host an embedded terminal. Type claude and the real Claude Code CLI launches, already briefed on the ticket it is working, the board around it, and the rules of the project. No wrapper, no proxy, no API layer.

This guide explains how that works and why a kanban board is the natural project manager for AI coding agents.

The core idea: tickets host terminals, terminals know the project

Kanban Pro is a free, local-first kanban app for macOS and Windows. Every ticket is a plain Markdown file with YAML frontmatter, stored in a folder you choose on your own disk. There is no server, no account, and no sign-up.

Because the data layer is plain files, an AI coding agent needs no integration to participate. Claude Code can read a ticket, update its checklist, move it to another column by editing one frontmatter field, and log its attribution, all with ordinary file operations. The board you see is a live rendering of the same files the agent edits.

The embedded terminal takes this one step further. Instead of opening a separate terminal app and navigating to your project, you open a terminal directly on a ticket. The shell is real: typing claude, codex, or aider invokes the actual CLI natively. Kanban Pro never wraps or simulates the agent.

Automatic context injection with KP-CONTEXT.md

When a terminal session starts on a ticket, Kanban Pro writes a session context file, KP-CONTEXT.md, together with a machine-readable JSON twin. It carries:

• The full ticket the session is bound to, including its checklist and links.
• Neighbouring tickets, so the agent understands adjacent work.
• The board's columns, so the agent knows what each status means.
• The project's rules files verbatim, so conventions are never lost.
• The team graph slice, so the agent knows who it is acting as and who it reports to.
• An identity envelope of environment variables (project, ticket ID, member ID, session ID, runtime ID).

The file regenerates automatically when the active ticket, a neighbour, or a rules file changes, and it is written atomically so an agent never observes a partial file. In practice this means a Claude Code session opened from a ticket starts with the equivalent of a thorough hand-off document, produced by the tool rather than typed by you.

Sessions persist and resume

Agent sessions are long-lived work, and losing one to a crash or an accidental window close is expensive. Kanban Pro persists every ticket-scoped session on disk under .kanban/sessions/. After a restart you can re-open the ticket and click Resume: the session comes back with its saved working directory, dimensions, and filtered environment, and the transcript continues appending to the same files.

This turns tickets into durable workstations. A ticket is not just a description of the work; it is the place where the work happened, with the terminal history to prove it.

More than Claude Code

Claude Code is a first-class citizen, but the terminal recognises a full roster of agentic CLIs out of the box, including OpenAI Codex, Cursor Agent, aider, Amp, OpenCode, Google's Antigravity, and Goose. Because the terminal is a real shell, any CLI you can install, you can run. Teams that mix agents can bind different runtimes to different team members and keep everything on one board.

Attribution you can audit

Every edit to a ticket, human or agent, carries a modified timestamp and a modifiedBy identifier in the ticket's frontmatter. The app surfaces all changes in a unified Activity Feed, so you can see exactly what each agent did and when, distinct from human edits. A generated MAPPING.md index summarises the whole board in one token-efficient table, which is what agents read first to triage work without opening every file.

Why a kanban board beats a task list for agents

A flat task list tells an agent what to do. A kanban board also tells it where the work stands, what is adjacent, and what done means. Columns encode progression. Links encode dependencies. Subtasks encode granular checklists that the agent ticks off as it goes, and when the final subtask completes, even via an agent editing the file externally, the app offers a one-click move to the next column.

Because all of this is Markdown and JSON on disk, it is version-controllable, diffable, and inspectable. There is no proprietary database between you and your project state, and no vendor between your agent and its memory. For the architectural argument in depth, see The Agent Memory Layer.

Getting started

1. Download Kanban Pro for macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) or Windows. It is free during Early Access, with over 4,100 downloads and a #1 spot on r/MacApps in July 2026.
2. Point it at a folder. New or existing, local or inside a synced drive like iCloud or Dropbox.
3. Create a ticket describing a task, with acceptance criteria as checkboxes.
4. Open the ticket's terminal and type claude.
5. Ask Claude Code to read its context and work the ticket. Watch the board update as it does.

No account, no API keys handed to a middleman, no data leaving your machine except whatever the agent CLI itself sends to its own provider.

Frequently asked questions

Does Kanban Pro wrap or modify Claude Code?

No. The embedded terminal spawns the genuine CLI as a native process. Kanban Pro's contribution is context: the session starts inside the project with a generated briefing file and identity environment variables.

Do I need an internet connection?

Not for Kanban Pro itself. The app is fully local. Agent CLIs like Claude Code connect to their own model providers as usual.

Can multiple agents work the same board?

Yes. Tickets are individual files, so agents can work different tickets concurrently. Attribution fields and the Activity Feed keep every change traceable to its author.

What platforms are supported?

macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon (M1 to M5) and Intel, and Windows 10 (1809 or later) and Windows 11. The Mac build is signed and notarised with an Apple Developer ID.

What does it cost?

Kanban Pro is free during Early Access. No subscription, no trial expiry, no sign-up.