KanBots — the open-source desktop edition
A single-user, local-first kanban: parallel agents, decision prompts, SQLite-backed history on your machine — no cloud account, no telemetry. Same UI as Cloud; same agent runtime. The whole product, free.
Builds are unsigned for now — macOS users right-click → Open the first time, Windows users hit More info → Run anyway on SmartScreen. Or build from source: pnpm desktop:dev →
.kanbots/
lives next to your repo
db.sqlite · worktrees · configs
0
bytes leave your machine
no telemetry, no servers
MIT
forever, no asterisks
fork it, ship it
Why two products?
OSS is what one person does. Cloud is what a team does.
The split is forced by economics, not by product strategy. Cloud has a backend (Postgres, Redis, presence, billing) which costs us per active user. OSS has zero hosting cost, so it stays free. Every Cloud-only feature requires another person or another device — none of them help a solo user.
We don't artificially gate OSS to drive Cloud upgrades. We don't have to. If you're solo on one machine, OSS does everything you need.
See the full feature matrix →
Autopilot included
The signature feature — yours, free.
Hand kanbots an issue and a budget. Up to 4 parallel slots round-robin through your persona roster, splitting parents into subtasks as they go. Or hit QA mode: typecheck/tests/lint/build/e2e in a loop, fix what fails, repeat until green.
The full autopilot_sessions table lives in your local SQLite. Stop the parent and all children stop with it.
Quickstart
Up in three commands.
$ git clone https://github.com/leodavinci1/kanbots $ cd kanbots $ pnpm install && pnpm desktop # build & open Electron # or, with hot reload: $ pnpm desktop:dev
Requires node 20+, pnpm 10+, git, and either claude or codex on your PATH.
Sustain the OSS desktop
Pay what it's worth to you.
KanBots OSS is free, MIT-licensed, and sustained by pay-what-you-can donations. If it saves you time, consider chipping in — any amount helps. No tier unlocks anything; donations keep the project healthy.
GitHub Sponsors
Pay-what-you-can, monthly or one-time — lowest friction if you already live on GitHub.
Donate via GitHub Sponsors →Open Collective
Transparent ledger by default — great when you need receipts and a public paper trail.
Donate via Open Collective →Polar
Tiered or one-time checkout with polished UX, Stripe-backed — no GitHub account required.
Donate via Polar →
Need to share a board with teammates?
Cloud adds real-time presence, assignment notifications, audit logs, SSO — agents still run on your hardware.