Best Vibe Kanban Alternatives (2026)

The best Vibe Kanban alternative for most Mac developers is Agentastic: its Kanban board turns every agent's worktree into a card with live diff stats, pull-request status, and a peek at the running terminal, and it runs 55 agent definitions, including Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. Windows and Linux users should look first at Orca and Emdash, both open source. If you used Vibe Kanban mainly to plan issues before agents start, Nimbalyst's trackers fit that habit best.

Vibe Kanban helped popularize the board-plus-worktree pattern, and its community edition still suits some people; the "When to stay" section covers who. Agentastic is our product, so the facts below come from each project's own docs, repository, and pricing page, checked on October 5, 2026.

What happened to Vibe Kanban#

Vibe Kanban was built by Bloop and launched in June 2025. It paired kanban issues with workspaces: pick an issue, and an agent starts on its own branch in a git worktree, with a terminal, a dev server, a preview browser, and a diff you can comment on. Here is what changed in 2026:

Date	What happened
April 10, 2026	Bloop announced its shutdown; version 0.1.42 added a data export
April 24, 2026	Version 0.1.44 replaced project pages with an export-only screen, and the README gained a "sunsetting" banner
30 days after the announcement	Hosted services were scheduled to end: kanban issues, comments, projects, and organizations
September 2026	Commits resumed on GitHub, and 0.1.45 was published to npm on September 19

So Vibe Kanban still runs, but not as the product most people adopted. Bloop's note says local workspaces keep working; the pull request that sunset the project page removed the interactive board itself. The project lives on as Apache-licensed code maintained by its community.

Vibe Kanban alternatives at a glance#

Tool	Best for	Platforms	Board or intake	Agents	Isolation	Price / license
Vibe Kanban (for reference)	Local agent workspaces in a browser UI	macOS, Linux, Windows via npx	Project board retired in 0.1.44	10 agents	Worktree per workspace	Free; Apache 2.0
Agentastic	A live board of every agent on a Mac	macOS 14+; iPhone beta	Worktree cards by label, with diff, PR, and terminal peek	55 built-in definitions plus custom	Worktree, Docker or Apple Container, SSH, cloud	Free; closed source
Nimbalyst	A backlog board agents also read	Mac, Windows, Linux desktops; iPhone app	Tracker boards plus a session kanban	Claude Code, Codex; OpenCode and Copilot in alpha	Optional worktree per session	Free for individuals; MIT
Orca	Cross-platform IDE with issue boards	macOS, Windows, Linux; iOS, Android	GitHub and Linear boards in the app	About 40 preconfigured plus any CLI	Worktree per agent; SSH	Free; MIT
Emdash	Tickets from many trackers	macOS, Windows, Linux	Issues from 10 trackers	34 CLI agents	Worktree per task; SSH	Free; Apache 2.0
Conductor	Issue-to-PR by chat on a Mac	Mac; iPhone app with Pro	New workspace from a GitHub or Linear issue	Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode	One worktree per workspace	$0 local; $50/mo Pro
Superset	Wiring agents into scripts	Mac, plus an experimental Linux build	Sidebar of workspaces; Linear with Pro	22 presets and custom commands	One worktree per task	Solo use free; $20/seat Pro; ELv2
Paseo	Runs triggered from GitHub or chat	All desktops, web, iOS, Android	Hub turns GitHub, Slack, and Discord mentions into runs	Native support for six providers, ACP for more	Worktree if you choose one	Apache 2.0; free
Claude Squad	Skipping the board entirely	Anywhere tmux is installed	A session list in the terminal	Whatever command a profile runs	tmux session and worktree per task	Free; AGPL-3.0

Why people look for a Vibe Kanban alternative#

• The board is gone. The feature in the name was retired with the hosted services, so planning now happens somewhere else.
• Team features went with the cloud. Shared projects, issues, comments, and organizations lived in Bloop's hosted service, which the shutdown notice gave 30 days.
• Release cadence is uncertain. The last tagged GitHub release is v0.1.44 from April 2026, even though community commits resumed in September.
• Agent coverage is fixed. Vibe Kanban supports ten agents: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, Claude Code Router, and Qwen Code.

1. Agentastic: best Mac alternative with a live agent board#

Agentastic is a Swift app for the Mac in which every agent works in its own git worktree and its own Ghostty terminal, running the provider's official CLI. Its Kanban board opens with Cmd+Opt+K and shows every worktree in every repository as a card, grouped into columns by label. A card carries the branch, live diff stats against the base, the pull request and its status, a linked Linear or Sentry issue, and one button per live agent session; hover a button to preview that terminal on the board.

• Best for: Mac developers who want to see what ten agents are doing at a glance, then review and merge without switching apps.
• Platforms: Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 14 or later; an iPhone app is in TestFlight beta for iOS 18 and up.
• Agents: 55 built-in definitions, covering every Vibe Kanban agent except Claude Code Router, which you can add as a custom agent.
• Isolation: worktrees as standard, and containers (Docker or Apple), SSH hosts, or Modal, Fly.io, and Vercel sandboxes billed to you when needed.
• Price and license: the app is free; its source is closed.

Where it beats Vibe Kanban: a board that is still part of the product, real terminals, an editor, a diff viewer where a line comment can go straight to the agent, AI code review, pull requests you can merge in the app, containers, and worktree relationships such as "blocks" and "depends on" shown as badges.

Where Vibe Kanban beats it: its board held issues that hadn't started yet. Agentastic's cards are worktrees, so the backlog lives in Linear, GitHub Issues, or a file until you launch. Vibe Kanban also runs on Windows and Linux, is open source, and runs a cleanup script when a workspace closes; Agentastic doesn't run teardown scripts automatically.

2. Nimbalyst: best for planning issues before agents start#

Nimbalyst, formerly Crystal, is the closest match to Vibe Kanban's planning side. Its trackers hold bugs, features, and tasks as plain files in your repository, with kanban, list, and tag-board views, and agents can read and update the same items. Sessions have their own kanban, and you can launch a worktree session straight from a tracker item.

• Best for: people who plan on a board first and hand items to Claude Code or Codex second.
• Platforms: desktop apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux; mobile on iPhone and iPad only.
• Agents: full support for Claude Code and Codex; OpenCode and Copilot are alpha.
• Price and license: MIT, free for one person; shared boards come with Teams, priced at $20 per user per month and free during its beta.

Where it beats Agentastic: a real backlog board, visual editors for docs and mockups, and Windows and Linux apps.

Where Agentastic beats it: dozens more agents, isolation that's on for every task rather than per session, and somewhere to send a task that needs a container, a remote host, or a cloud sandbox. See Nimbalyst alternatives for more.

3. Orca: best cross-platform IDE with issue boards#

If your backlog already lives in GitHub or Linear, Orca brings those boards into the app: browse issues and project boards, then open a worktree straight from a task. It's MIT-licensed, from Stably AI, and runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Agents get the usual Orca kit: split terminals, a Monaco-based editor, Chromium with a design mode, and diff comments that go back to the agent.

• Best for: Vibe Kanban users on Windows or Linux who keep their backlog in GitHub or Linear.
• Platforms: Windows, Linux, and macOS, with phone companions on iPhone (App Store) and Android (APK).
• Agents: about 40 set up in one click; other CLIs run in a plain terminal.
• Price and license: free; MIT.

Where it beats Agentastic: Windows, Linux, and Android users aren't left out, and the MIT license allows forks.

Where Agentastic beats it: a board of the work already running, native Swift in place of Electron, containers and cloud sandboxes outside any experimental menu, and CodeRabbit or Greptile reviews. If you want approval prompts, change Orca's default under Settings → Agents, since it adds each agent's permission-bypass flag to new launches.

4. Emdash: best for pulling tickets from many trackers#

Emdash leans hard on ticket intake. The README for General Action's Apache-licensed app names ten trackers, from GitHub, GitLab, and Jira to Linear, Asana, and YouTrack, and every issue you hand over gets its own worktree. Around that sit an in-app browser, scheduled automations, and SSH remote projects.

• Best for: teams whose backlog lives in a ticket system and who want the closest open-source desktop replacement.
• Platforms: macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• Agents: 34 CLI-based agents.
• Price and license: free to use under Apache 2.0.

Where it beats Agentastic: PC users on Windows or Linux can run it, and its license permits changes and redistribution.

Where Agentastic beats it: a board of the work in progress, a phone app, containers, and cloud sandboxes on accounts you already have.

5. Conductor: best chat-first Mac app#

Melty Labs' Conductor suits people who used Vibe Kanban as a launcher rather than a planner. Pick a GitHub or Linear issue, and a worktree-backed workspace opens with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or OpenCode ready to chat; review, the pull request, merge, and archive follow in the same window.

• Best for: Mac users who want issue-to-PR in a chat interface.
• Price and license: $0 for local work; Pro, at $50 a month, is what unlocks Conductor's hosted workspaces, live collaboration, its beta API, and the iPhone app. Closed source.

Where it beats Agentastic: no cloud account to set up, because Conductor hosts the sandboxes, and live multiplayer for teams.

Where Agentastic beats it: a board, each agent's own terminal, far more agents than Conductor's four, and container or SSH isolation for local work, which Conductor's FAQ says runs unsandboxed.

6. Superset: best scriptable workspace#

Superset (the agent app, not Apache's BI tool) puts each task in a worktree and runs Claude Code, Codex, or any CLI there, with a file editor, a diff viewer, an agent-drivable browser, and a CLI, SDK, and MCP server for wiring it into other tools.

• Best for: developers who want to script how work flows to agents.
• Platforms: macOS; the README calls the Linux AppImage experimental.
• Price and license: a solo user pays nothing; Pro costs $20 per seat monthly or $15 yearly and brings the Linear and Slack integrations, automations, remote access, and the phone app. The Elastic License 2.0 it uses is source-available, not open source.

Where it beats Agentastic: you can read its code and extend it through the SDK.

Where Agentastic beats it: a board, a Swift app instead of Electron, per-task containers, and Linear issues and remote agents with no paid seat.

7. Paseo: best for kicking off agents from GitHub or chat#

Paseo keeps agents on machines you control, behind a daemon, and lets you reach them from desktop, web, iOS, Android, or a CLI. Its optional Paseo Hub starts agents on your machines when someone mentions the bot in GitHub, Slack, or Discord, which covers part of what a shared board did for teams.

• Best for: teams that triaged in Vibe Kanban's cloud and now want work to start from GitHub or chat.
• Price and license: Apache 2.0 and free; hosted Hub gives 50 agent runs a month at no cost, then $15 per seat for Pro.

Where it beats Agentastic: runs that start from a GitHub, Slack, or Discord mention, plus Android, web, Windows, and Linux clients.

Where Agentastic beats it: a visual board, an editor, containers, and review agents in one native app. See Paseo alternatives.

8. Claude Squad: best if you never wanted a board#

Some Vibe Kanban users only wanted the worktree half. Claude Squad does exactly that from the terminal: run cs, and each new session gets a tmux session and a git worktree, with Claude Code by default and Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Aider, or another command available through profiles.

• Best for: people who want worktrees per task without a GUI or a board.
• Price and license: AGPL-3.0 and free; install tmux and the GitHub CLI first.

Where it beats Agentastic: it's at home on a headless Linux server.

Where Agentastic beats it: the visual layer: a board, an editor, a browser, alerts, and review agents. See Claude Squad alternatives.

When to stay with Vibe Kanban#

The community edition is still a reasonable choice if:

• You only used local workspaces, not the hosted board, issues, or organizations.
• You like a browser UI launched with one npx command on macOS, Linux, or Windows.
• Its ten agents cover you and you want Apache-licensed code you can patch.
• You're willing to track the repository, or a fork such as vibe-kanban-indie, which keeps kanban issues local for a single developer.

How to choose#

1. Decide where the backlog lives. If it lives in GitHub or Linear, choose a tool that reads it: Orca, Emdash, or Conductor, or Agentastic with linked issues. If you want the board to be the backlog, choose Nimbalyst.
2. Decide what the board should show. Planned work: Nimbalyst. Running work, with diffs, PRs, and live terminals: Agentastic.
3. Check your OS. Off the Mac, your options are Orca, Emdash, Nimbalyst, and Paseo.
4. Match your agents. Every option here runs Claude Code; check Codex, OpenCode, Gemini, or Amp support in the table before you move.
5. Plan for teams. For shared, real-time work, look at Nimbalyst Teams, Conductor's multiplayer, or Paseo Hub.

How to migrate from Vibe Kanban to Agentastic#

Vibe Kanban workspaces are git worktrees on ordinary branches, so no code is lost in the move. Plan for about an hour per repository.

1. Find your in-flight work. In each repository, git worktree list shows the worktrees Vibe Kanban created and their branches. Commit and push every branch you want to keep, and open pull requests for anything nearly done.

2. Move the backlog. If you exported before the hosted services closed, you have a ZIP of CSV files with projects, issues, statuses, and assignees. Recreate open items in Linear or GitHub Issues, which Agentastic can link or @-mention when you launch an agent. See issue tracking and plugins.

3. Free the branches. A branch can only be checked out in one worktree, so remove the old ones once their work is pushed:

   bashCopy

   git worktree list git worktree remove <path-from-the-list> git worktree prune

4. Install Agentastic and your agents. Agentastic needs macOS 14; install it with brew install agentasticai/tap/dev or the DMG on the download page. Agentastic finds known CLIs in your shell; add Claude Code Router as a custom agent under Settings → Connections.

5. Port the repository scripts. Vibe Kanban's setup script becomes .agentastic/setup.sh, executed whenever a worktree is created (setup scripts). The dev server script becomes a repository task, as described in Tasks, and you preview it in the built-in browser. Run any cleanup script yourself before removing a worktree.

6. Rebuild the columns as labels. Create labels for the stages you used, such as In progress, In review, and Done. Unlabeled worktrees land in the No label column, and you drag a card to relabel it. To-do and Backlog items stay in your tracker until an agent starts.

7. Continue open branches. Pull requests show up in Agent Home's base-branch picker alongside branches; choosing one creates a worktree on that pull request's branch.

8. Launch with a label. Agent Home lets you pick a Label as you launch, so choose the column a run belongs in before you send it. From a script, the system-wide dev CLI does the same:

   bashCopy

   dev agent create --repo ~/src/app --agent opencode --name fix-login \ --label "In progress" --prompt "Fix the login redirect loop and add a test."

9. Review and merge in place. Leave line comments in the diff viewer and send them to the agent, run a review agent, then watch CI and merge from the pull-request panel. Move the card to Done when it's merged.

Recurring jobs can file themselves too: a scheduled agent captures the label in its launch snapshot.

Sources#

The facts in this guide come from these first-party sources, reviewed on October 5, 2026:

• Vibe Kanban: homepage, shutdown announcement, repository settings and scripts, supported agents, GitHub, export pull request, npm package
• vibe-kanban-indie: GitHub
• Nimbalyst: pricing, kanban and list views, GitHub
• Orca: homepage, GitHub
• Emdash: docs, GitHub
• Conductor: pricing, issue to PR guide, FAQ
• Superset: pricing, GitHub
• Paseo: Paseo Hub, GitHub
• Claude Squad: GitHub

Continue the research:

• Kanban board docs, including worktree relationships
• Git worktrees in Agentastic
• AI coding agent orchestration tools: board-based and terminal-based tools ranked together