vibe-kanban/README.md

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![](frontend/public/vibe-kanban-screenshot-overview.png)

## Overview

AI coding agents are increasingly writing the world's code and human engineers now spend the majority of their time planning, reviewing, and orchestrating tasks. Vibe Kanban streamlines this process, enabling you to:

- Easily switch between different coding agents
- Orchestrate the execution of multiple coding agents in parallel or in sequence
- Quickly review work and start dev servers
- Track the status of tasks that your coding agents are working on
- Centralise configuration of coding agent MCP configs
- Open projects remotely via SSH when running Vibe Kanban on a remote server

You can watch a video overview [here](https://youtu.be/TFT3KnZOOAk).

## Installation

Make sure you have authenticated with your favourite coding agent. A full list of supported coding agents can be found in the [docs](https://vibekanban.com/docs). Then in your terminal run:

```bash
npx vibe-kanban
```

## Documentation

Please head to the [website](https://vibekanban.com/docs) for the latest documentation and user guides.

## Support

We use [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/BloopAI/vibe-kanban/discussions) for feature requests. Please open a discussion to create a feature request. For bugs please open an issue on this repo.

## Contributing

We would prefer that ideas and changes are first raised with the core team via [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/BloopAI/vibe-kanban/discussions) or [Discord](https://discord.gg/AC4nwVtJM3), where we can discuss implementation details and alignment with the existing roadmap. Please do not open PRs without first discussing your proposal with the team.

## Development

### Prerequisites

- [Rust](https://rustup.rs/) (latest stable)
- [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/) (>=18)
- [pnpm](https://pnpm.io/) (>=8)

Additional development tools:
```bash
cargo install cargo-watch
cargo install sqlx-cli
```

Install dependencies:
```bash
pnpm i
```

### Running the dev server

```bash
pnpm run dev
```

This will start the backend. A blank DB will be copied from the `dev_assets_seed` folder.

### Building the frontend

To build just the frontend:

```bash
cd frontend
pnpm build
```

### Build from source (macOS)

1. Run `./local-build.sh`
2. Test with `cd npx-cli && node bin/cli.js`


### Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be configured at build time or runtime:

| Variable | Type | Default | Description |
|----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `POSTHOG_API_KEY` | Build-time | Empty | PostHog analytics API key (disables analytics if empty) |
| `POSTHOG_API_ENDPOINT` | Build-time | Empty | PostHog analytics endpoint (disables analytics if empty) |
| `PORT` | Runtime | Auto-assign | **Production**: Server port. **Dev**: Frontend port (backend uses PORT+1) |
| `BACKEND_PORT` | Runtime | `0` (auto-assign) | Backend server port (dev mode only, overrides PORT+1) |
| `FRONTEND_PORT` | Runtime | `3000` | Frontend dev server port (dev mode only, overrides PORT) |
| `HOST` | Runtime | `127.0.0.1` | Backend server host |
| `MCP_HOST` | Runtime | Value of `HOST` | MCP server connection host (use `127.0.0.1` when `HOST=0.0.0.0` on Windows) |
| `MCP_PORT` | Runtime | Value of `BACKEND_PORT` | MCP server connection port |
| `DISABLE_WORKTREE_ORPHAN_CLEANUP` | Runtime | Not set | Disable git worktree cleanup (for debugging) |

**Build-time variables** must be set when running `pnpm run build`. **Runtime variables** are read when the application starts.

### Remote Deployment

When running Vibe Kanban on a remote server (e.g., via systemctl, Docker, or cloud hosting), you can configure your editor to open projects via SSH:

1. **Access via tunnel**: Use Cloudflare Tunnel, ngrok, or similar to expose the web UI
2. **Configure remote SSH** in Settings → Editor Integration:
   - Set **Remote SSH Host** to your server hostname or IP
   - Set **Remote SSH User** to your SSH username (optional)
3. **Prerequisites**:
   - SSH access from your local machine to the remote server
   - SSH keys configured (passwordless authentication)
   - VSCode Remote-SSH extension

When configured, the "Open in VSCode" buttons will generate URLs like `vscode://vscode-remote/ssh-remote+user@host/path` that open your local editor and connect to the remote server.

See the [documentation](https://vibekanban.com/docs/configuration-customisation/global-settings#remote-ssh-configuration) for detailed setup instructions.