Comparison
Kanban skill vs.
Vibe Kanban
Vibe Kanban is a cockpit for running many coding agents in parallel — and the company behind it, Bloop, shut down in April 2026. The kanban skill is a planning board your agent edits as plain files in your repo. They fix different bottlenecks. Here's the honest difference, and what actually carries over.
Plain Markdown in your repo. A planning board your agent edits.
A local web app. A cockpit that runs many agents in parallel.
Vibe Kanban shut down — where to now?
Bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban, wound down in April 2026. Paid plans were cancelled and refunded, the cloud features were retired, and the project went fully local. It was left open source under Apache-2.0 — but the original repo has had no new commits since late April 2026, so its future now rides on community forks rather than the team that built it.
If what you valued in Vibe Kanban was the board — a calm place to line up and sharpen work for your coding agent — the kanban skill gives you that as plain files in git, with no company that can shut down and no server to keep alive. If what you valued was the engine that runs many agents in parallel, be warned: the kanban skill is not that, and we'd rather tell you now than lose you three sections in.
Kanban skill vs. Vibe Kanban
Ten dimensions. A is a clear win; a dash is a deliberate trade-off that comes down to what you need. The kanban skill takes the lightness and planning rows; Vibe Kanban takes the parallel-agent and review ones — its real strengths, stated plainly.
A planning board your agent edits in the repo — line up and sharpen the work.
A cockpit to run many coding agents in parallel and review what they produce.
None — you drive one agent; the board doesn't run agents.
Its core strength — many agents at once, each in an isolated git worktree.
Not its job — your harness shows the diffs.
Built in — inline diff review, live preview, and pull-request handling.
A refine loop turns a rough idea into a ready, concrete task.
Minimal — the board mostly queues and tracks agent runs.
Plain Markdown in your repo, in git.
A local SQLite database in a config directory.
Just files — no server, nothing to keep alive.
A local web app (Rust backend + web UI) you start and keep running.
One prompt: a skill file and a small script.
npx vibe-kanban, plus each agent CLI installed and signed in.
Any agent that can read files — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, more.
The agent CLIs it wires up — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and others.
None — the board is files that travel with the repo.
Apache-2.0 and self-hosted, and a data export shipped before shutdown.
Actively maintained.
Bloop shut down in April 2026; the original repo has since stalled.
Planning board vs. orchestration cockpit
The two tools sit at different points in the loop. One is where you decide what to build; the other is where you run the agents that build it. Mistaking one for the other is how you end up disappointed — so here it is straight.
Kanban skill — the plan
A board your agent reads and edits as plain Markdown in your repo. You save a rough idea, a refine loop sharpens it into a ready task, and you approve before code is written. The work lives in git, next to the code it changes.
It does not run agents, spin up worktrees, or diff their output — your harness does that. It's the map, not the engine.
Vibe Kanban — the engine
A local web app that runs many coding agents at once, each isolated in its own git worktree, then lets you review their diffs and preview the app in one place. Its value is throughput across parallel agent runs.
It isn't built to sharpen a half-formed idea into a plan — the board mostly queues and tracks runs. Refinement is minimal.
Plenty of people ran Vibe Kanban for its board alone. If that was you, the kanban skill is a lighter home for it — files in git, nothing to keep running. If you ran it to drive agents in parallel, keep an eye on the community forks; the kanban skill won't replace that engine.
Where each one wins
Neither is strictly better. The kanban skill optimizes for a lean, file-based board that outlives any tool; Vibe Kanban optimizes for running and reviewing many agents at once.
Kanban skill
Nothing to keep running
The board is plain Markdown in your repo — no web app, no database, no server. Nothing to install past the agent you already run, and nothing that can go offline.
Planning, not just queuing
A refine loop digs into the missing pieces and turns a rough idea into a ready, concrete card you approve before any code is written. Vibe Kanban's board mostly queues agent runs.
Outlives any company
No SaaS, no bundled runtime, no repo that can stall. The board is files in git — clone the repo and it comes with you. Bloop shutting down is exactly the risk this avoids.
Any agent, any time
It's just files, so any file-reading agent can drive it — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, whatever you switch to next. You're not tied to one tool's list of supported CLIs.
Vibe Kanban
Runs many agents at once
Its whole reason to exist: fan work out to several coding agents in parallel, each isolated in its own git branch and worktree so they never collide. The kanban skill doesn't run agents at all.
Execute-and-review in one place
Inline diff review, a built-in browser to preview the app, and pull-request handling — all in the cockpit. You watch and steer agent output without leaving the board.
A real board UI
A web board built to drive agent runs — spin up a task, watch it work, switch between workspaces. Purpose-built for orchestration, not a plain file you grep.
Broad agent support
First to market on multi-agent orchestration, with many agent CLIs wired up out of the box — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and more.
Which should you use?
Reach for the kanban skill when
- You want a planning board your agent edits right in the repo.
- You want zero infrastructure — files in git, nothing to run or keep alive.
- You'd rather not tie your board to a product that can shut down.
- You drive one agent at a time and value a clear plan over parallelism.
Reach for Vibe Kanban when
- You want to run many coding agents in parallel, each isolated.
- You want inline diff review and live preview in one cockpit.
- Orchestrating and reviewing agent runs is your real bottleneck.
- You're fine depending on a community fork now that Bloop has shut down.
They fix different bottlenecks. Vibe Kanban is an orchestration cockpit for running many agents; the kanban skill is a planning board one agent edits in your repo. If you loved Vibe Kanban's board for lining up work, the skill gives you that as plain files that outlast any company. If you loved its parallel-agent engine, the skill isn't that — and we'd rather say so.
Since Bloop shut down, the board is the part worth carrying forward with no company attached — and that's exactly what the kanban skill is.