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Vibe Kanban Alternative: A Board for Agents, With Guardrails
Vibe Kanban is a browser-based kanban board for coding agents. Its company, Bloop, shut down in April 2026 and the project continues as community-run open source.
Updated
Forkbench is a Vibe Kanban alternative that is actively developed and goes beyond the board. Agents claim tasks from each Thread's board, you see who is working or stuck at a glance, nothing counts as done until you accept it, and every job gets a kernel folder lock and keys the agents never read.
If you loved giving agents a board to work from, Forkbench keeps that idea and wraps it in the parts a board alone cannot give you: boundaries, supervision and a safe way to bring people in.
| Forkbench | Vibe Kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| Agents locked to your project folders | Yes. The macOS kernel seals off the rest of your home folder, per Thread | Git worktrees only |
| API keys the agent never sees | Yes. The Vault runs the command and the agent only gets the result | Your environment, as usual |
| Every agent at a glance | Yes. A live pulse on every tab and the task each agent claimed | Board columns |
| Know when an agent is stuck | Instantly. It turns red and the Thread counts who needs you | Board status |
| Share one job with a teammate or client | Yes. Invite them to one Thread, never your machine | Not published |
| Human sign-off before work counts as done | Always. Agents report, only you accept | Review column |
| Works with | Any CLI agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, Gemini CLI, Aider, your own scripts | A long list of agents |
| Price | Free | Open source |
Why developers pick Forkbench
- A board on every Thread, with tasks agents claim, report and hand off.
- A needs-you flag and a live pulse, so the board is never the only place you look.
- Folder lock and Vault built in.
- Actively developed, with a native desktop app.
What Vibe Kanban does well
- A rich board with sub-issues and a review view.
- Open source, runs anywhere Node runs.
The verdict
Vibe Kanban still runs today if you want to self-host and maintain the board yourself, now that nobody is left building it full time. Forkbench is the safer long-term home for that same idea: a board your agents claim from, backed by a team still shipping, wrapped in a folder lock and a Vault no bare kanban board ever had.
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Comparison based on publicly available information, checked on the date above. Spot something out of date? Tell us.