knbn

Kanban, but terminal-native and CSV/Markdown-based.

Features

• Terminal-native Kanban board — full task lifecycle (capture, triage, close) without leaving the terminal; no browser required
• Flat-file CSV and Markdown storage — tasks live in a single ~/.knbn/ folder; human- and agent-readable, version-control friendly, no database
• Markdown notes per task — attach a freeform note to any task, opened in your $EDITOR
• Rich TUI powered by Textual — interactive board with keyboard navigation, modal forms, and live filtering
• Three views in one tool — Kanban board (3×3 grid), tabular active-task list, and a "Done this week" archive view
• Configurable statuses and priorities — define your own workflow stages and priority levels to match how you actually work
• Configurable categories — tag tasks with custom categories and add new ones on the fly
• Fast CLI capture — knbn add --fast --title "..." adds a task without opening the TUI; pipe-friendly for scripting
• Zero external services — no account, no sync server, no cloud dependency; your data stays local and offline
• Pure Python, uv-managed — install with a single uv command; typed, linted, and tested; easy to fork or extend

Installation

Requires Python 3.10+. The default data directory is ~/.knbn. If you want to change this, set the environment variable KNBN_DATA_DIR.

From PyPi

pip install knbn

or

uv tool install knbn

Then you can run in a new shell:

knbn

From Source

Additionally needs uv.

git clone https://github.com/BastiTee/knbn.git
cd knbn
make

Then run:

uv run knbn

To simplify access via source, you can put this into your shell-rc:

source /path/to/cloned/folder/knbn-rc.sh

and after shell restart run:

k

See knbn-rc.sh for more details.

License

Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004