emanuele-em/kanzo

Kanzo is a small self-hosted task board for people who work alongside coding agents. It combines a browser kanban view and an MCP server in one program, so an agent such as Claude Code or Codex can pick up a task, move its card, and comment on progress while you watch. The board lives in a single folder as a SQLite database, with settings in config.toml; there is no account and no central server.

What changes in practice

The concrete workflow: start the board locally, register the agent's MCP server, then ask it to take the next task. The agent moves the card to doing and writes comments as it works. Kanzo identifies the right project from the git remote of the repository the agent is working in, and additional repos can be linked to a project from its menu. A Backlog column is optional; agents leave its tasks alone until you drag them to todo.

Two mechanisms stand out. First, one binary serves both the web UI and an MCP endpoint, so the human view and agent tools operate on the same SQLite data rather than synchronised copies. Second, every task is searchable across projects with / or ⌘K, and the whole board can be exported as Markdown or JSON via kanzo export.

Setup paths and requirements

Kanzo installs on macOS and Linux, including Raspberry Pi, either through a release installer or cargo install install and usage instructions. The board opens at localhost:4242 by default, and --port and --no-open adjust startup. Agents connect through kanzo mcp, through the running board's /mcp endpoint, or through client-specific registration commands for Claude Code and Codex.

The default listen value of 127.0.0.1 keeps the board local. Setting it to 0.0.0.0 exposes it to the network, and the README explicitly warns there are no logins, so this should only be done on a trusted network configuration details. Any client connecting over a non-local address—or an app needing a full path, such as Raycast—needs that full path resolved with which kanzo.

Multi-machine sync

To share one board across machines, point each installation at the same empty private git repository. Kanzo then commits, pulls and pushes the board folder; if both machines changed the board, it asks which side to keep. Sync is intended for switching machines, not for simultaneous editing. For agents working on multiple machines at once, the documented alternative is one board listening on the network, with each agent pointed at the host's MCP URL and passing the project by name.

The board's size claims—4.1 MB binary, about 4.5 MB idle memory, 2 ms start, 17 ms to load 3,000 tasks—are author measurements on an Apple M4, not a guarantee for other hardware.

Licence

Kanzo is AGPL-3.0: if you offer a modified version over a network, you must share its source licence.

HotRepo's take

Kanzo had 109 total stars on the NEW-REPOSITORY board for Rust on 2026-10-28, when it was observed; this is not a daily growth figure, and no comparable daily history is available. Treat this as a young, self-hosted project rather than evidence of long-term adoption.