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Vibe Kanban Alternative for Coding Agents
Vibe Kanban is a browser-based kanban board for coding agents, started with npx vibe-kanban, covering task planning, prompting and review across a long list of agents including Claude, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot, Amp, Aider, OpenCode and Windsurf. As of August 2026 its makers say the commercial product is sunsetting and it continues as community-maintained open source.
Start with the honest part: Forkbench is not a kanban app, and if a board is what you are replacing, a community-maintained open-source one will fit you better than we will. Forkbench does have a board, agent-agnostic and free on every plan, and it exists because several agents working one job need somewhere to keep out of each other's way. It is not the product. The product is what the agents can reach: a credential used by the command that needs it and never handed to the agent, and a set of folders the macOS kernel will not let them read outside of. If you were looking at Vibe Kanban because coordinating agents is the visible problem, that is worth knowing before you choose a replacement by feature list.
| Forkbench | Vibe Kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A Mac app for running agents, where the board is one free part | A kanban board for agents |
| Why people look | Credentials and folder limits, not a board replacement | Happy self-hosting a community project |
| Form | Native macOS app the agents run inside | Browser app, started with npx |
| Platform | macOS only | Anywhere Node runs |
| Source | Closed | Open source, community-maintained |
| Agents | Any terminal agent, in a real login shell | A long named list |
| Credentials | Vault (Pro): the command gets the value, the agent gets the result | Your environment, as usual |
| Isolation | Worktrees, plus a kernel-enforced folder lock | Git worktree automation |
| Price | Free; Pro €30/mo; Team $30/seat, dropping to $20 at scale, flat | Open source |
Where Vibe Kanban is strong
- As a board it is simply more of a board than ours: sub-issues, a review interface with comments and diffs, a built-in browser for testing changes. We are not trying to match that and will not.
- Browser-based, so it is not tied to macOS the way we are, and the agent support list is longer in name.
- Open source and community-maintained, which matters a great deal if you want to read what it does or change it.
Where Forkbench differs
- Keys agents use and never hold. A token in Vault reaches the command that needs it and not the agent's prompt, command line or transcript. A board cannot do this, whoever builds it.
- Kernel-enforced folder limits per Thread, and a pane that can be sealed off from the notes, the keys and the board entirely.
- The agents run inside the app, in real login shells, rather than the app orchestrating agents running somewhere else. That is what makes the two boundaries above possible at all, and it is the structural difference between the two products.
- Notes and secrets sealed on your Mac under keys we do not hold, on every plan including the free one.
- The board itself is free and stays free, claims and all. It is a convenience that comes with the thing you are actually installing.
The bottom line
If what you want is a board, take the open-source one. It is free, it is more of a board than ours, it runs anywhere Node runs, and you can fix it yourself. We would be a bad trade for that alone. Come here for the other thing: the agents run inside the app, which is what makes it possible to give one a credential it can use and never read, and to bound what it can open at the kernel rather than in a config file it may not honour. The board and the notes come with that, free, because agents that share a job need somewhere to coordinate. They are the convenient part, not the reason.
Keep reading
- How keys, notes and boards are actually protected, including where each defence stops.
- Keeping API keys away from AI coding agents
- Every comparison
Comparison based on publicly available information as of mid-2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.