# Introduction

What Kandown is, what it deliberately is not, and who it is for.

> Kandown documentation — https://kandown.dev/docs/introduction

Kandown drops a `tasks/` folder into your project and gives you three ways to work with it: a
polished web board, a full terminal UI, and a scriptable CLI. All three read and write the same
plain Markdown files.

There is no server to run, no database to migrate, no account to create and no sync service to
trust. If you can read a folder of text files, you can read your board.

> **Tip**
> Prefer to poke at it first? The [web app](/app) runs the real application in your
> browser with no login. It opens on a sample project that resets on reload. In a compatible
> browser, choose **Open project** to work directly with a local Kandown folder.

## The three ideas

### Your data is just files

One `.md` file per task, one folder, versioned in git. Nothing to export because nothing was ever
imported. Open a task in your editor, `grep` your backlog, write a shell script against it, hand
the folder to a colleague — it is all the same operation on the same files.

There is no index, no cache and no manifest. The directory *is* the state. Move a file between
folders and the board moves with it; delete one and the task is gone. That constraint is enforced
deliberately across the codebase — see [Architecture](/docs/project/architecture.md).

### Agents are first-class users

Most tools bolt AI on as an integration: an API key, a plugin, a webhook. Kandown assumes an agent
is simply another user of the board, and gives it the same affordances as you.

`kandown work` prints everything an agent needs — the rules, your project instructions, a live
board digest, and the computed next actionable task — as Markdown on stdout. Every task command is
non-interactive, JSON-capable and offline. See [For AI agents](/docs/agents/overview.md).

### Local-first, actually

The board runs from a small daemon bound to `127.0.0.1` with a per-project token. Task commands
never touch the network. The web UI ships as a single self-contained HTML file you can open from
anywhere, including from a USB stick on a machine with no internet.

## What Kandown is not

> **Note**
> Being clear about the boundaries saves you evaluating it for the wrong job.

- **Not a team server.** There is no realtime multiplayer, no permissions model and no hosted
  instance. Collaboration happens the way it does for the rest of your repo: through git.
- **Not a project-management suite.** No burndown charts, no sprint ceremonies, no time tracking.
- **Not a hosted service.** Nothing to sign up for, and nothing that can shut down and take your
  data with it.

## Who it is for

Developers who already live in a repository and want their task list to live there too — and
anyone running AI coding agents who needs a shared, durable place for those agents to pick up work,
report on it, and hand it back.

## Next

Install it, then run through the [quick start](/docs/quick-start.md) — it takes about two minutes.