kanban-cli

name

kanban-cli

description

Use this skill whenever the user wants to interact with the Kanban board via the CLI — listing or creating projects, viewing a board, managing columns, or managing cards (create, update, move, delete). Trigger on any request like "show me the board", "add a card", "move that task", "create a project", "what's in my backlog", "rename the column", or any other Kanban management request, even if the user doesn't say "CLI" explicitly. Always use this skill instead of calling the API directly with curl.

Kanban CLI Skill

The kanban command is globally linked and talks to the API at http://localhost:3001 (override with KANBAN_API_URL). The server must be running — if commands fail with a connection error, remind the user to run npm run dev -w server.

ID Lookup Pattern

Most commands need IDs (project, column, card). Always resolve them before acting:

# Step 1 — list projects to get a project ID
kanban projects list

# Step 2 — show board to get column/card IDs (shown truncated in [brackets])
kanban board <projectId>

# For full IDs of columns or cards, fetch the board JSON directly:
curl -s http://localhost:3001/api/projects/<projectId>/board | python3 -c \
  "import sys,json; b=json.load(sys.stdin); [print(c['title'], c['id']) for c in b['columns']]"

When the user refers to something by name ("the In Progress column", "the CI task"), look it up — don't ask them to paste an ID.

Commands

Projects

kanban projects list
kanban projects create "<name>"
kanban projects rename <projectId> "<new name>"
kanban projects delete <projectId>

Board (visual overview)

kanban board <projectId>

Shows all columns side-by-side with cards. Card IDs are shown truncated — use the curl pattern above when you need a full ID.

Columns

kanban columns create <projectId> "<title>"
kanban columns rename <projectId> <columnId> "<new title>"
kanban columns delete <projectId> <columnId>   # also deletes all cards in the column

Cards

kanban cards create <projectId> <columnId> "<title>" ["<description>"]
kanban cards update <projectId> <cardId> --title/-t "<t>" --description/-d "<d>" --column/-c <columnId> --order/-o <n>
kanban cards move   <projectId> <cardId> <columnId>   # shorthand for changing column
kanban cards delete <projectId> <cardId>

Common Workflows

Add a card to a named column:

# 1. Get project ID
kanban projects list
# 2. Get full column ID by name
curl -s http://localhost:3001/api/projects/<projectId>/board | python3 -c \
  "import sys,json; b=json.load(sys.stdin); print(next(c['id'] for c in b['columns'] if c['title']=='In Progress'))"
# 3. Create the card
kanban cards create <projectId> <columnId> "My task" "Optional description"

Move a card by name:

# Get full card ID
curl -s http://localhost:3001/api/projects/<projectId>/board | python3 -c \
  "import sys,json; b=json.load(sys.stdin); print(next(c['id'] for c in b['cards'] if c['title']=='My task'))"
# Move it
kanban cards move <projectId> <cardId> <targetColumnId>

After any mutation, show the updated board so the user can see the result:

kanban board <projectId>

Tips

• Card IDs in kanban board output are truncated to 8 chars — use the curl/python3 pattern to get the full UUID when needed for update/move/delete.
• cards update accepts any combination of flags; omit flags you don't want to change.
• columns delete cascades — all cards inside are permanently removed.
• If there's only one project, skip the listing step and use its ID directly.