For one person

A personal kanban board, for one person's work.

Team boards are built around other people: members, assignments, comments and notifications. Take those away and what is left is a board with one job. When you glance at it, it should answer three questions: what is in flight, what is late, and what am I doing right now.

Built to be glanced at

Kaniban is designed for a second monitor and an eight-hour day. It is looked at dozens of times an hour and read closely only now and then, so it is quiet by rule. Nothing pulses or glows or animates on a loop, except the one signal that a timer is running. A card's colour is a wash and a dot, not a banner. There are no badges, counters or timestamps that nobody would look at twice. The board is meant to still be legible at five in the afternoon.

What is on the board

• Columns you name, in the order you want them. Drag a card between them and that is its new state.
• Cards that carry the work. A title, notes in markdown, tags, a due date, a timer, and a short code such as PRD-014 that stays with the card for life. Supporter adds steps you can tick and a picture.
• Workspaces for separate areas of life, each with its own columns, cards and ticket prefix. Two on the free tier, five on Supporter, as many as you like on Plus.
• Filters by text, ticket code, column, tag and due-date range, with one button to clear them.

Four views, one set of cards

Most tools make you choose between a board and a calendar and then keep two copies of the truth. Kaniban keeps one. The board is the view you keep open. The calendar places dated cards on their days; drop a card on another day and that is its new date. The timeline lays dated cards out as bars across the weeks, so a crowded stretch shows itself before you are in it. The summary is the step back: where the hours went, how the last thirty days moved, how much runway is left before the deadlines. Timeline and summary are on Supporter and above.

Keyboard first

Press Ctrl K and type. A few letters reach any card, any view or any workspace. /nc:the title makes a card, /ncl:a name makes a column, /focus:a column shows only that column. Esc closes whatever is open. Your hands stay where they were.

Whose work it suits

Any kind. The board belongs to no profession, and its defaults stay legible to a freelancer, a student, a tradesperson or a writer. There are no sprints, funnels or roadmaps in its vocabulary. If you have a lot of small things in flight and you would like to see them, that is the whole requirement.

What it deliberately lacks

Sharing, assignment, comments, notifications, and sync. Each is the point of a team tool and dead weight on a personal one. If you need them, the comparisons say which tools have them. Kaniban would rather be the quiet board on the other screen.

Questions