Launching agents — Kandown docs

From the board

Select a task in the terminal UI and press a. Kandown assembles the task context and launches the agent you choose on it.

Agent	Binary	Launch mode
Claude Code	`claude`	interactive session
OpenAI Codex	`codex`	interactive session
Gemini CLI	`gemini`	`-p` initial prompt
Goose	`goose`	`run --text`, non-interactive
Aider	`aider`	`--message` initial prompt
OpenCode	`opencode`	TUI, context written to `/tmp`

Each entry launches differently because each CLI expects a different shape of input — an interactive session where that is the natural mode, a one-shot prompt where it is not. Only agents whose binary is on your PATH are offered.

Your own tooling

Anything else — an IDE, a bot, an internal queue, a webhook into your own orchestrator — connects through the agent hook. Press g in the terminal UI (or use Send to Agent in the web board) and Kandown posts the task to your endpoint.

export KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_URL="https://example.internal/agents/kandown"
export KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_LABEL="Send to Orchestrator"
export KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_HEADERS='{"Authorization":"Bearer $TOKEN"}'

Variable	Effect
`KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_URL`	Endpoint that receives the task
`KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_LABEL`	Custom label for the button
`KANDOWN_AGENT_HOOK_HEADERS`	JSON object of extra headers

Careful

The hook is the one part of Kandown that makes an outbound network request, and it does so only when you press the key. Point it somewhere you trust — the task body goes with it.

In a loop, without the UI

The board does not have to be involved at all. kandown work plus the task commands are enough to drive an agent from a script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

CONTEXT=$(kandown work)
NEXT=$(kandown list --json | jq -r '[.[] | select(.status=="Todo")][0].id // empty')

[ -z "$NEXT" ] && { echo "nothing actionable" >&2; exit 0; }

kandown move "$NEXT" "In progress"
claude -p "$CONTEXT

Work on task $NEXT. Update the task file as you go."

Two properties make this reliable: task commands never touch the network, and stdout is data-only, so the $( … ) captures above hold exactly what you expect. See the output contract.