Vibe Kanban alternatives in 2026: what to use after the shutdown

On 10 April 2026, Bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban, shut down. The reason was simple and honest: thousands of users, nearly all of them free, and no business model the team wanted to build. The project lives on as open source under Apache 2.0, maintained by the community. The cloud features (shared issues, comments, projects and organisations) were switched off 30 days later, and Vibe Kanban became a fully local app.

If you used Vibe Kanban, you’re probably deciding what to do next. The right answer depends on what you were using it for, because Vibe Kanban did two quite different jobs in one app.

The short answer

• You’re solo and it still works for you: keep using it. npx vibe-kanban still runs locally.
• You only used it to run Claude Code sessions in parallel: Claude Code now does most of that itself, with --worktree and agent view.
• You want the board and the agent runs, with a team or from your phone: Yokka is a hosted board with a runner that starts agents on your machine when you press Start on a card.
• Your team already lives in Trello, Jira or Linear: their MCP servers may be enough for one agent at a time.

What Vibe Kanban actually did

Vibe Kanban combined two jobs:

1. Running agents. It launched coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor and others) in their own git worktrees, gave each one a terminal and dev server, and let you review the diff, comment inline and open a pull request.
2. Holding the work. Tasks lived on a kanban board, and each task could turn into an agent run.

When you pick a replacement, check it covers the job you actually relied on. Many tools do only one.

Option 1: keep running Vibe Kanban

Nothing forces you to switch. The local app still works:

npx vibe-kanban

Your local workspaces kept working through the shutdown, and the code is Apache 2.0, so anyone can fork and maintain it. Several people have, with their own fixes and features.

The risks are the usual ones for an unfunded project. The promised community roadmap hadn’t appeared as of late summer, so expect slow fixes. Agent CLIs change every few weeks, and an integration can break without anyone responsible for fixing it. And the team features are gone for good. If you’re a solo developer and it still works for you, staying is a perfectly reasonable choice. If you’re a team, you’ve already lost the shared board.

Option 2: Claude Code’s built-in tools

If you mostly used Vibe Kanban to run several Claude Code sessions at once, Claude Code has caught up:

• claude --worktree <name> starts a session in its own git worktree and branch.
• claude agents opens agent view (in research preview): dispatch background sessions and see which ones are working, need input or have a pull request ready for review.
• The Claude desktop app runs parallel sessions in worktrees too.

What’s missing is the board. Agent view shows your sessions, not your backlog, and everything stays on one machine. We cover the whole setup in How to run multiple Claude Code agents in parallel.

Choose it if Claude Code is your only agent, you work alone, and you’re happy keeping the task list in your head or a text file.

Option 3: Yokka, the board and the runs

Yokka covers both of Vibe Kanban’s jobs, with the board hosted so your team and your phone can reach it, and the agents running on your own machine.

The board

You plan cards with a brief (what, why and done-when), split into swimlanes like Features and Bugs. Any MCP client (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code and others) connects with one command:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user yokka https://api.yokka.ai/mcp/c/<token>

Agents find the next card, claim it, post progress, ask you questions and complete it with a PR link.

• Claims don’t collide. A card is held by one agent at a time, so several agents can pull from the same board safely.
• Questions become a lane. When an agent asks you something, the card moves to Needs you and is flagged. You answer on the card.
• The board moves itself. Flow rules move cards when agents claim, ask or finish. Bugs go to Verify so a person checks each fix.
• Built for teams. Invite people as admins, members or viewers (viewers on Pro, any role on Team), see each other on the board live, and give each agent its own scoped token. This is the part of Vibe Kanban that went away with the cloud features.

The runner

The runner replaces the other half of Vibe Kanban: starting agents from a task. Install it once on the computer that holds your code, tell it which folder is which project, and leave it running:

npx yokka-runner

Then press Start on any card, from the board or from your phone, and the runner starts Claude Code or Codex on that computer to work the card.

• In place or a worktree per card. Choose per project. In place, the agent works in your folder, one run at a time. With worktrees, each run gets its own git worktree and branch (like yokka/yk-12-add-checkout), so several cards run at once.
• Your agents, your sign-ins. It drives the claude and codex you already have installed and signed in. Claude Code sessions show up in the Claude desktop app and update live, so you can pick one up there.
• Answer from anywhere. When an agent asks something or hits a permission prompt, your phone gets a push. For Claude Code it opens the agent’s own session in the Claude app, where you answer. For Codex it opens the card, where Continue in Codex hands the thread to the Codex app. You can pause, resume or stop a run from the card too.
• You stay in charge of your machine. The runner is open source and connects outward, so there are no open ports or tunnels. Which folder belongs to which project lives only in its local config. The board can only ask it to start a run for a card, never send it a command or a path. Runs start in a permission mode you picked and never skip permissions, and only you can start runs on your runner: no teammate, not even an admin.
• It reports back. When a run ends, the card gets the branch, how many commits it made and how many files it left uncommitted.

What’s different from Vibe Kanban

Yokka doesn’t have its own diff viewer or preview browser. Review happens where your team already reviews code: the agent opens a pull request and completes the card with the link. The runner starts Claude Code and Codex; other agents connect over MCP and you start them yourself.

There’s a free plan for the board. Pro is $15 (€15) a month and adds runners (up to five machines) and phone notifications. Choose it if you want a shared board that agents work from, runs you can start and answer from anywhere, or you worked with a team on Vibe Kanban’s cloud.

Option 4: your existing tracker, over MCP

Trello, Jira and Linear all have official MCP servers now, and Linear can run coding agents itself. If your team already lives in one of them, that may be enough. It works best with one agent at a time, because none of them has a claim that stops two agents taking the same ticket. We compared them in Trello MCP server vs Jira and Linear.

Vibe Kanban vs Yokka, feature by feature

Moving your tasks over

The window for exporting Vibe Kanban’s cloud data closed 30 days after the shutdown. Local tasks are still in your local install. The easiest way to move them is to let an agent do it. Connect it to Yokka, then:

Here are my open Vibe Kanban tasks: <paste them>.
File each one as a card on the Yokka board. Write the brief as what, why and
done-when, and leave out anything that's already finished.

The agent files each card with add_card. Take the chance to tighten the briefs as you go: a clear done when saves a round of questions later. Then install the runner, map your repository, and press Start on the first card.

FAQ

Is Vibe Kanban dead?

No, but the company behind it is. Bloop shut down on 10 April 2026. Vibe Kanban is now open source (Apache 2.0), community-maintained and local-only. The cloud features were removed after 30 days.

Can I still use Vibe Kanban?

Yes. npx vibe-kanban still runs locally and local workspaces keep working. Expect slower fixes, and no team features.

Can Yokka start agents like Vibe Kanban did?

Yes, with the runner. Install it on the computer that holds your code, and pressing Start on a card starts Claude Code or Codex there, in place or in its own git worktree. You can start runs from your phone.

Is the Yokka runner open source?

Yes. It’s the only Yokka code that runs on your machine, and it’s small enough to read. It connects outward only, keeps your folder paths local, and can’t be sent commands or paths from the board.

What’s the best Vibe Kanban alternative for teams?

A hosted board that everyone, and every agent, connects to. Yokka is built for this: live presence, roles, per-agent tokens, questions flagged for the person who started the agent, and runners on each developer’s machine.

Does Vibe Kanban work with Claude Code?

Yes. It supports Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and others.