<p align="center">
<picture>
<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="assets/readme/logo-dark.svg">
<img src="assets/readme/logo.svg" width="330" alt="cliban">
</picture>
</p>
<p align="center"><b>The board your agents can't forget.</b></p>
<p align="center">
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<a href="https://github.com/LioraLabs/cliban/releases/latest"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/LioraLabs/cliban?style=flat-square&label=release" alt="latest release"></a>
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</p>
<p align="center"><img src="assets/board.png" width="880" alt="the cliban board"></p>
Your agent wrote a five-task plan, finished two tasks, compacted its context,
and greeted the next session with a cheerful blank stare? cliban is a
self-hosted kanban board built for exactly that agent. The spec and the plan
live in the issue, steps get ticked as they land, every mutation is recorded
on a timeline automatically, and durable lessons persist as searchable
project memory. All of it sits in SQLite behind atomic CLI commands, so the
plan outlives the context window that wrote it.
```console
$ cliban issue show PROJ-42 --section plan # two steps ticked, three to go
$ # ...session crashes, /clear, compaction, lunch...
$ cliban issue current --json # which issue is this branch again?
$ cliban activity --since 1d # what happened while nobody was looking
$ cliban issue tick PROJ-42 --task 2 --step 1 # and back to work
```
One board, three front doors:
- **A flat CLI** built for agents: every read has a `--json` form, no command
opens an editor unless asked, and mutations are atomic and safe to run
unattended.
- **A ratatui TUI** for you: priority-colored cards over five columns
(`backlog / in-progress / blocked / in-review / done`).
- **`cliband`** for your team: an SSH daemon serving the same live board to
everyone. `ssh boards.example.com` and you're in. SSH keys are the auth,
one SQLite database per tenant is the isolation. See
[Hosting shared boards](#hosting-shared-boards-over-ssh-cliband).
Heard enough?
```sh
That fetches the prebuilt binaries for your platform, verifies them against the
release checksums, and installs `cliban` and `cliband` into `~/.local/bin`. Or
pick your own poison:
```sh
brew install lioralabs/tap/cliban # macOS and Linux
cargo install --git https://github.com/LioraLabs/cliban cliban # from source
```
Prebuilt archives (static musl for Linux x86_64/aarch64, macOS Intel and Apple
Silicon, each carrying both binaries) and their `SHA256SUMS` are on the
[releases page](https://github.com/LioraLabs/cliban/releases). An AUR
`PKGBUILD` lives in [`packaging/aur`](packaging/aur).
## Why not ___?
**A markdown plan file?** Writing the plan to disk is the right instinct,
and it's how most agent-planning setups work: a `task_plan.md` and a
`progress.md`, re-read every turn. But a loose file has no structure a tool
can enforce. The agent can clobber the plan wholesale, two agents corrupt it
in parallel, and "how far did we get" is a diff, not a query. cliban makes
the plan a contract: tickable steps mutated through `tick`, `log`, and
`promote`, each one a single SQL transaction, each one refused loudly (exit
code 2) when the structure is violated. Nothing is ever deleted, archiving
is reversible, and the history survives every rewrite.
**Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues?** Built for humans clicking. Agents drive
them through rate-limited APIs with auth tokens, and your plans live on
someone else's server. cliban is a local SQLite file with a flat CLI:
nothing leaves your machine unless you run `cliband`, and then it goes only
where your SSH keys say.
**Your agent's own memory?** That's the thing that keeps getting compacted.
## Agents
The [Claude Code plugin](plugin/) ships the full workflow: the `cliban` CLI
skill, a convention layer for brainstorm, plan, execute, and finish, `/bugs`
and `/status` commands, ticket capture, and `complete-milestone`, an
orchestrator that runs every issue in a milestone through its own agent in
dependency order, each in an isolated git worktree.
```bash
claude plugin marketplace add LioraLabs/claude-plugins
claude plugin install cliban@lioralabs
```
Session recovery is the point. After a crash, `/clear`, or compaction, an
agent re-derives its entire working state from the board:
```bash
cliban issue current --json # the issue for this git branch
cliban issue show PROJ-42 --section plan # ticked steps ARE the progress file
cliban activity --since 1d --json # the timeline since yesterday
cliban project search PROJ "wal mode" --json # durable lessons, fuzzy-searched
```
Other harnesses can use the same skill file directly:
[`plugin/skills/cliban/SKILL.md`](plugin/skills/cliban/SKILL.md) follows the
Agent Skills format and documents the complete command surface. A test keeps
it honest: name a command in the skill that the CLI doesn't have, and the
build fails.
## Workspace
- `cliban-core`: storage + domain layer (rusqlite; owns the schema and migrations).
- `cliban-tui`: the kanban board, priority-colored cards over cliban's five columns.
- `cliban`: the CLI binary. `cliban <subcommand>` for scripting, `cliban`
(no args) or `cliban tui` for the board.
- `cliban-tenancy`: multi-tenant storage for the daemon, a `registry.db`
(users, pubkeys, memberships, invites) routing to one cliban-core database
per tenant under `tenants/<id>.db`.
- `cliban-server`: the `cliband` binary, a russh-based SSH daemon serving the
TUI to authenticated clients with live cross-session updates.
## Quickstart
```bash
cliban project add PROJ --name "My project"
cliban issue add --project PROJ --title "First issue" --priority high
cliban # opens the TUI
```
### Board keys
`hjkl` move the cursor · `H/L` move the focused issue across columns · `J/K` reorder it
within a column · `Enter` detail · `e` edit ($EDITOR) · `E` edit project/milestone ·
`n` new issue · `N` new milestone · `t` cycle milestone tag · `a` archive ·
`m` milestone page · `M` cycle milestone filter · `/` fuzzy find · `r` refresh ·
`?` help · `q` quit.
### Milestone page (`m`)
A full-screen view of every milestone (across all projects when the board is
unscoped), ordered by *recent activity*: the newest activity-log entry on any
of the milestone's issues. Shows done/total progress, target date, and a
detail pane for the focused row.
Type to filter by name or project key · `j/k` move · `Enter` scopes the board
to the milestone (and to its project) · `Tab` cycles the status bucket
(open / completed / cancelled / all) · `S` cycles the sort (activity / name /
target) · `C` cycles the focused milestone's own status · `E` edit ($EDITOR) ·
`N` new · `Esc` back to the board.
Cancelled is the archived state for a milestone: there is no separate archive
flag.
## Hosting shared boards over SSH (cliband)
`cliband` turns cliban into a hosted, multi-tenant kanban service with SSH as
the only transport: no browser, no TLS certificates, no reverse proxy. Auth is
SSH public keys; every tenant gets its own SQLite database, so isolation is
physical. Boards are live: a card moved in one session appears in every other
session on that tenant within a tick.
### Five-minute VPS setup
```bash
# on the server
cargo build --release -p cliban-server
sudo install -m755 target/release/cliband /usr/local/bin/cliband
sudo useradd --system --home /var/lib/cliband cliband
sudo mkdir -p /etc/cliband
sudo cp deploy/config.example.toml /etc/cliband/config.toml # set signup_token!
sudo cp deploy/cliband.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl enable --now cliband
```
First boot generates an ed25519 host key under the data dir. Point a DNS name
at the box, then from anywhere:
```bash
ssh -p 2222 boards.example.com signup myteam <signup-token> # create a tenant
ssh -p 2222 boards.example.com # open the board
```
Teammates join with their own keys:
```bash
ssh -p 2222 boards.example.com invite # you (owner): prints a one-time code
ssh -p 2222 boards.example.com accept <code> # them: joins as member
```
Other control commands: `whoami`, `members`. A key with several tenants gets a
picker on connect. Running the daemon ad hoc (no systemd) also works:
`cliband --config config.toml`, or plain `cliband` for pure defaults.
### Configuration
All keys optional; defaults in parentheses. See `deploy/config.example.toml`.
| `listen_addr` | bind address for the SSH listener (`0.0.0.0:2222`) |
| `data_dir` | host key + registry.db + tenants/*.db (`$XDG_DATA_HOME/cliband`) |
| `signup_policy` | `open` \| `token` \| `closed` (`token`) |
| `signup_token` | shared token for `signup_policy = "token"` (unset means signup denied) |
| `max_tenants_per_key` | tenants one public key may create, 0 = unlimited (`5`) |
| `max_tenants` | global tenant cap, 0 = unlimited (`0`) |
Logs go to stderr, one fact per line: `journalctl -u cliband` shows them
stamped and indexed. Backup, export, or delete of a tenant is a file
operation on its `tenants/<id>.db`.
## Migrating from the Go cliban
The legacy Go build stored data in the same SQLite file under an older
schema. Convert it once:
```bash
cliban migrate-legacy --from /path/to/old/cliban.db --to /path/to/new/cliban.db
```
It opens the source read-only and writes a fresh `cliban-core` database,
preserving projects, milestones, issues, labels, relations, and
done-timestamps.
## Editor integration
By default `cliban issue add` and `cliban issue edit` never open an editor:
they fail fast if no content flags are supplied, which is the right behavior
for agents. Inside the TUI, select a card and press `e` for the frontmatter
+ markdown buffer in `$EDITOR` (`$VISUAL` first, falls back to `vi`):
<p align="center"><img src="assets/editor.png" width="880" alt="editing an issue in nvim"></p>
## The description contract
Some cliban commands (`issue tick`, `issue promote`, `issue log`,
`issue show --section`) parse the markdown structure of an issue's
`description` field. They expect a small, well-defined contract.
### Top-level sections
Four H2 anchors are reserved and matched exactly:
- `## Spec`: the design/brainstorm output for this issue
- `## Plan`: the implementation plan
- `## Activity Log`: chronological events
- `## Notes`: long-lived notes (mostly for project-level descriptions)
Anything else in the description is preserved untouched.
### Plan tasks and steps
Within `## Plan`, tasks are numbered H3 headings:
```markdown
## Plan
### Task 1: short title
- [ ] **Step 1: ...**
- [ ] **Step 2: ...**
### Task 2: another short title
- [ ] **Step 1: ...**
```
Tasks are numbered (`### Task <N>:`), unique within the section. Steps are
GFM checkbox lines at column zero: `- [ ] ...` or `- [x] ...`. Indented
child bullets are not parsed as steps.
### Promotion suffix
A step that has been split into its own issue is suffixed with ` → KEY`:
```markdown
- [ ] **Step 3: CSRF middleware** → PROJ-18
```
Produced by `cliban issue promote`, consumed by readers: humans, and any
tooling that walks plans.
### Failure mode
If the structure is violated (missing `## Plan` anchor, renamed
`### Task N`, and so on), the workflow commands exit with code 2 and a clear
error naming the structural problem. No best-effort recovery: fix the
description and retry.
## Fuzzy-find tickets
Three coordinated surfaces share one matcher:
- `cliban issue ls --search QUERY`: pipeable. Adds a `score` field in
`--json` output and respects every existing `ls` filter (`--project`,
`--label`, `--milestone`, `--status`, `--priority`, `--archived`,
`--no-subs`, `--parent`). `--limit N` caps results (default 50 when
`--search` is set).
- `cliban fff [QUERY]`: prints the selected key to stdout so you can
compose: `cliban issue show $(cliban fff)`. Same filter flags as `ls`.
Batch NDJSON mode when stdin is not a TTY (great for `cliban fff foo | jq`).
- `/` inside `cliban tui`: fuzzy filter overlay; selecting a card snaps the
board cursor onto it.
The matcher weights matches across title (×3.0), key (×2.5), labels (×2.0),
and description (×1.0). Default scope is all non-archived issues across all
projects; narrow with `--project`, `--label`, and friends.
## What changed recently
The TUI's activity page (`a`) is a mailbox for the board: every recorded
event newest-first, with chips to filter by kind — `closed` answers "what
shipped recently" — type-to-filter across keys, titles, messages, and
actors, and `Enter` to jump to the issue on the board:
<p align="center"><img src="assets/activity.png" width="880" alt="the activity page"></p>
From the CLI:
```bash
cliban activity # last 24h, every project
cliban activity --since yesterday --json
cliban activity --since 3d --project PROJ --limit 200 --json
```
A merged, newest-first feed: `created` / `completed` when an issue opened or
finished in the window, `updated` for any other change neither of those
explains, `status` / `archive` for the transitions cliban recorded itself,
and one `log` event per `## Activity Log` line written in the window.
`--json` emits NDJSON of `ts`, `key`, `project`, `kind`, `issue_status`,
`title`, `message`, `actor`, `milestone` (`issue_status` is the issue's
status *now*, not at the time of the event).
### Recorded automatically
Every mutation writes to the issue's timeline without being asked: moves,
archives, field edits, label and relation changes, plan ticks, promotions,
and `issue log` notes. The history is complete even when nobody remembers to
narrate it:
```bash
export CLIBAN_ACTOR=claude # attribute what you do
cliban issue mv PROJ-42 blocked --note "upstream fix needed"
cliban issue edit PROJ-42 --priority urgent --label regression
cliban issue show PROJ-42 --section activity
# - 15:10Z — [claude] found it: positions collapse after ~50 reorders
# - 15:12Z — [claude] in-progress → blocked: upstream fix needed
# - 15:13Z — [claude] priority: high → urgent, +label regression
```
Nothing is ever deleted. A deleted row would take its timeline with it, so
`issue rm` and `project rm` archive, and `milestone rm` cancels. Each
reports what it really did and how to undo it:
```console
$ cliban issue rm PROJ-12
archived PROJ-12 — cliban archives instead of deleting (undo: cliban issue unarchive PROJ-12)
```
(`label rm` still deletes: a label is a tag, not a work item.)
Two sources feed that view: the entries cliban records
(`activity_log_entries`, attributed and durable) and the `## Activity Log`
markdown an author writes with `cliban issue log`. `issue log` writes both,
so a note survives a later `--description` rewrite that erases the markdown,
and the rewrite itself is recorded as `description rewritten, dropped ##
Activity Log`. Reads merge the two chronologically and de-duplicate, so
nothing appears twice.
`--since` (and `issue ls --updated-since`, which shares the same parser)
accepts a duration (`45s`, `90m`, `4h`, `3d`, `2w`), `today`, `yesterday`, a
bare date (`2026-07-25`), or a full RFC3339 timestamp. All UTC.
## Projects
The TUI's project page (`p`) is where projects live: every project with
issue and milestone rollups, ordered by recent activity. Type to filter,
`Enter` scopes the board, `N` creates (including your very first project on
an empty database), `E` edits in `$EDITOR`, and `A` archives — `Tab` flips
to the archived bucket, where `A` unarchives:
<p align="center"><img src="assets/projects.png" width="880" alt="the project page"></p>
From the CLI:
```bash
cliban project ls # key, name
cliban project show PROJ # + description
cliban project archive PROJ # recoverable: unarchive brings it back
```
## Milestones
The TUI's milestone page (`m`) shows every milestone across projects,
ordered by recent activity, with progress and a detail pane:
<p align="center"><img src="assets/milestones.png" width="880" alt="the milestone page"></p>
From the CLI:
```bash
cliban milestone ls --project PROJ # name, status, target
cliban milestone ls # every project
cliban milestone ls --sort activity --stats # + done/total and recency
cliban milestone ls --status open --sort target # what's due next
cliban milestone edit --project PROJ --name v0.1 --status completed
```
`--sort` takes `activity` (most recently worked on first), `name` (the
default) or `target` (soonest first, undated last). `--stats` adds a
`done/total` column and a last-activity column, and, with `--json`, the
`done_count`, `last_activity` and `last_activity_human` keys.
## Persistent agent memory
Durable agent context lives in the project's existing Markdown description,
under `## Notes`. Give each independently useful lesson its own `###`
heading so cliban can retrieve it without loading the whole section.
```bash
cliban project add PROJ --name "My project" --description-file project.md
cliban project show PROJ --section notes
cliban project search PROJ "sqlte canonical" --section notes --json
cliban project edit PROJ --description-file updated-project.md
# stdin works too:
cliban project edit PROJ --description-file - < updated-project.md
```
`project search` fuzzy-matches every whitespace-separated query term against
each `###` heading and body. It returns only matching subsections as NDJSON,
ranked by score and capped by `--limit` (default 20). Retrieval is
progressive: search first, load the full `## Notes` section only when
needed. `--section all` searches every `###` subsection in the description.
## Theming
The TUI's palette is built for dark terminals, but every named slot can be
re-colored from `~/.config/cliban/theme.toml` (`$XDG_CONFIG_HOME`
respected; `CLIBAN_THEME_FILE` overrides the path). One `slot = color` per
line — named colors, 256-color indexes, or `#rrggbb` — and anything unset
keeps its default, so a light theme only overrides what hurts.
[`assets/themes/light.toml`](assets/themes/light.toml) is a ready-made
starting point; the full slot list is documented in
`crates/cliban-tui/src/ui/theme.rs`.
## Roadmap
**Loom**, a milestone orchestrator built on this store, is in development:
it snapshots a milestone, freezes a validated execution manifest (dependency
waves, roles, restart policies), and drives the whole thing to completion
restart-safely, with cliban remaining the source of truth for the work items
themselves. The `complete-milestone` skill in the plugin is the manual
version of that loop today.
## A note on stability
cliban is pre-1.0 software. The skill file documents the CLI as it actually
is: a test walks every command the skill names and fails the build when the
two disagree. If the README and the CLI disagree, the README has a bug.
## Test
```bash
cargo test --workspace
```