kanban-based-development

Kanban-Based Development

Autonomous, parallel-safe development using kanban-md to coordinate work on a shared board. Claims expose task ownership and reduce duplicate work when participants follow the protocol; review is the waiting room (handoff, user action, merge, decisions).

Multi-Agent Environment

This board is shared. Multiple agents and humans may be working on it simultaneously. You are NOT the only one reading or modifying tasks. This means:

• Another agent may claim a task between the time you list it and try to pick it.
• Tasks you saw as available a moment ago may no longer be available.

The claim mechanic is the coordination primitive. It lets cooperating agents exclude work already owned by someone else. You MUST claim a task before starting any work on it, and you MUST only pick unclaimed tasks. Claims are leases rather than a security or distributed-transaction boundary; ignoring the protocol can still cause duplicate work and merge conflicts.

Non-Negotiables

• Claim before you change anything. No task edits, no code changes.
• One active task per agent. Keep at most one task in in-progress for your agent session.
• Never steal a live claim. If it's claimed, pick something else.
• Never release someone else’s claim. Only use edit --release for your own work (or when the user explicitly asks).
• Always leave a handoff. Before you park a task, write a short update in the body so someone else can continue.
• Refresh claims to avoid timeout. If the task might take longer than claim_timeout, periodically renew your claim: kanban-md edit <ID> --claim <agent>.

Board Home vs Worktrees (simple rule)

• Always run kanban-md from board home (the canonical repo directory that owns the shared board).
• Always do code changes in a task worktree. Never edit code in board home.
• If the board is git-tracked, commit board changes on main as a separate commit after the task is merged and moved to done.

At the start of the session, determine and remember <board-home>:

cd <the canonical repo directory that owns the shared board>
pwd   # remember this path as <board-home>

Recommended: keep two shells (or split panes) open:

• Board shell at <board-home> for kanban-md commands
• Worktree shell at the task worktree for code changes