# Kandown

> A free, open-source, local Kanban for long-running AI agent work. Every task is a Markdown file, managed from the web, TUI, or CLI.

## Install

```bash
npm install -g kandown
```

Requirements, install methods, and how Kandown keeps itself up to date. — https://kandown.dev/docs/installation.md

## For agents

How agents get full board context in one command, why stdout is data-only, and how to wire Kandown into an agent loop.

Start here: https://kandown.dev/docs/agents/overview.md

## Documentation

Every page below is also served as Markdown by appending `.md` to its URL.

### Getting started

- [Introduction](https://kandown.dev/docs/introduction.md): What Kandown is, what it deliberately is not, and who it is for.
- [Installation](https://kandown.dev/docs/installation.md): Requirements, install methods, and how Kandown keeps itself up to date.
- [Quick start](https://kandown.dev/docs/quick-start.md): From an empty project to a running board, a first task, and an agent that can pick it up.

### Using the board

- [Tasks](https://kandown.dev/docs/guides/tasks.md): Creating tasks, the fields they carry, subtasks with reports, dependencies, and templates.
- [Board & views](https://kandown.dev/docs/guides/board-and-views.md): The web interface — kanban and list views, filtering, search, the command palette and keyboard shortcuts.
- [Terminal UI](https://kandown.dev/docs/guides/terminal-ui.md): The keyboard-driven board that works over SSH, with no browser involved.
- [Appearance](https://kandown.dev/docs/guides/appearance.md): Themes, custom themes in JSON, density and motion tokens, fonts, languages and notifications.

### AI agents

- [Overview](https://kandown.dev/docs/agents/overview.md): How agents get full board context in one command, why stdout is data-only, and how to wire Kandown into an agent loop.
- [Project instructions](https://kandown.dev/docs/agents/instructions.md): Teaching agents your project's specifics through .kandown/instructions.md, and why it beats pasting rules into AGENTS.md.
- [Launching agents](https://kandown.dev/docs/agents/launching.md): Handing a task to Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Goose, Aider or OpenCode — and wiring your own tooling through the agent hook.
- [MCP server](https://kandown.dev/docs/agents/mcp.md): Exposing the board over the Model Context Protocol, and when to prefer it over plain CLI calls.

### Reference

- [CLI](https://kandown.dev/docs/reference/cli.md): Every Kandown command, its flags, and the output contract that makes them safe to script.
- [Data model](https://kandown.dev/docs/reference/data-model.md): The complete shape of a task file — frontmatter fields, body conventions, and the folder layout.
- [Configuration](https://kandown.dev/docs/reference/configuration.md): kandown.json, environment variables, the update check, and the daemon's security model.

### Project

- [Architecture](https://kandown.dev/docs/project/architecture.md): How the pieces fit together — the shared core, three interfaces, the daemon, and the invariants that keep them honest.
- [Contributing](https://kandown.dev/docs/project/contributing.md): Setting up the repository, the build commands, the rules CI enforces, and where help is most useful.

## Everything at once

- [Full documentation, one file](https://kandown.dev/llms-full.txt)

## Links

- [Web app](https://kandown.dev/app) | the real app in the browser, free and without a login
- [Source](https://github.com/vava-nessa/kandown)
- [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/kandown)