Agent-native workspace
A board for the work, a graph for what you learn
Kanbento is a kanban board and a knowledge system that live in the same files in your repository. Cards carry work to done; notes keep what's worth knowing; every move appends to an immutable log your agents operate.
Two systems, one repository
Most tools track the work or store the knowledge. Kanbento does both, over the same files — because the two belong together: the cards track the work, and the notes are what you learned doing it.
A kanban board on the progress axis — cards move left to right toward done.
- Cards, WIP limits, and gates (Definition of Ready / Done)
- BOARD.md shows every card and where it sits
- A card owes delivery — it isn't done until it ships
A typed graph on the confidence axis — knowledge accretes as you work.
- Notes, records, and typed links between them
- PORTFOLIO.md shows your standing positions and their status
- A note owes nothing — knowledge at rest, no gate, no ceremony
Three kinds of unit, told apart by what they owe
Card — owes delivery
The board's token. It carries a stage from birth and moves toward done — work you're tracking to an outcome.
Note — owes nothing
A unit of knowledge at rest. No status, never on the board — captured because it's worth knowing, not because it owes a result.
Position — owes evaluation
A note that grew an identity and a lifecycle. Tracked by confidence, not progress — a standing bet you revisit.
How work moves
Capture
Options are cheap. Drop proposals into the pool, where everything is discardable — the bar to create is low, the bar to commit stays high.
Commit
Rank the whole pool by value and pull the best fit across the Definition of Ready gate, into free WIP — not the oldest, the best.
Flow
Drive the card through active work and review. A failed check loops it back; WIP limits keep the pipeline honest.
Deliver
Cross the Definition of Done. Value out and options in stay balanced — the board's heartbeat keeps the pool from bloating or starving.
It behaves like the rest of your codebase
Files, not a service
The whole workspace — board and graph alike — is Markdown and JSON under .kanbento/, operated by a CLI. No database, no server. Commit it beside your code, diff it in a PR, roll it back like anything else. Every move is an appended event, so state is a replay: auditable, and reversible by appending its inverse. Structure stays minimal — you add a stage, a WIP limit, or a gate only when the flow earns it.
Questions
Is this just a kanban board?
The board is half of it. Alongside the flow, Kanbento accretes a typed knowledge graph — notes, records, and the links between them — so what your agents learn is captured next to the work, not lost in a chat log.
Is it a SaaS?
No. Kanbento is a CLI plus a folder of files in your repository. There’s nothing to host and nothing to log into.
Do I need agents to use it?
No — the verbs work for humans too. But the workspace is designed so an agent can operate both the board and the graph from AGENTS.md and the generated views.
Where does the state live?
In an append-only event log. BOARD.md, PORTFOLIO.md, and the other views are read-models that regenerate from it, so the log is the single source of truth.
Start with a bare pool
Install the CLI, capture your first card or note, and let the workspace grow only when your work earns it.