Termiban — Terminal Kanban

Self-hosted personal Kanban for your terminal. Linux-only.

No cloud, no account. Your board lives as a single board.json on your machine. Manage tasks with deadlines, priorities, and tags — all from a fast TUI.

Built with Rust, ratatui + crossterm. Clean, modular codebase.

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Why Termiban?

• Private by design — local JSON file, no sync required
• Terminal-native — stays in your workflow, works over SSH
• Custom boards — any columns you want, not just To Do / Doing / Done
• Rich tasks — title + description, due dates, priority, tags
• Start from scratch — delete everything and rebuild; onboarding guides you

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Features

Boards

• Add, rename, delete, and reorder columns
• Start empty and build your own flow, or create from template
• Welcome screen when empty guides you to your first column

Tasks

• Title and description — description is long (wraps, no limit, shown full in detail view)
• Deadline (YYYY-MM-DD) — overdue in red, today in yellow
• Priority — Low · Medium ▲ High ‼ Urgent (color + icon, p to cycle)
• Tags — comma-separated, e.g. work, bug
• URL — https://… (🔗 in list, o to open in browser, https:// required)

All changes auto-save.

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Install

Requires Rust 1.98+.

git clone https://github.com/revprm/termiban
cd termiban
cargo build --release
# binary at target/release/termiban

# optional: install to ~/.cargo/bin
cargo install --path .

# run
cargo run --release
# or
termiban

Portable data file:

TERMIBAN_DATA_PATH=/tmp/board.json termiban

Compatibility: Linux only. macOS and Windows are not supported.

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Quick Start

termiban

1. First run gives you a template board: To Do → In Progress → Done.
2. Press ? for help, q to quit.

To build your own board from scratch:

• Open board manager: B
• Press c to clear, then a to add Backlog, C to add Doing, C to add Review…

Or delete columns one by one with B → d until empty — the welcome screen will offer a (add column) or t (template).

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Keybindings

Navigate

• h/l or ←/→ — columns
• j/k or ↓/↑ — tasks
• H/L — move task to prev/next column

Tasks

• n — quick add (title only) · N — full add (all fields incl. URL + long desc)
• e — quick edit · E — full edit
• Enter / v — view details (wrapped long description + URL)
• p — cycle priority · o — open URL
• d / x — delete

In full form (N/E) — 6 fields: Title → Description (long) → Deadline → Priority → Tags → URL

• Tab / Shift+Tab — next/prev field
• p on Priority — cycle
• Enter — save (validates YYYY-MM-DD and https://), Esc — cancel

Board

• B — board manager → a add, r rename, d delete, t template, c clear, H/L move
• C — quick add column, R — quick rename

General: ? help, q/Esc quit.

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Where is my data?

Auto-saved JSON. Location (in order):

1. $TERMIBAN_DATA_PATH or $TERMIBAN_DATA if set
2. $XDG_DATA_HOME/termiban/board.json
3. ~/.local/share/termiban/board.json
4. ./board.json

Long descriptions? Paste as much as you want — detail view wraps, no hard limit. Add a URL for quick o open.

Edit board.json by hand if you like:

{
  "title": "My Board",
  "columns": [
    {"name": "Backlog", "tasks": []},
    {"name": "Doing", "tasks": [
      {"id":1,"title":"Fix login","description":"Long notes here...\nMultiple paragraphs wrap in detail view.","deadline":"2026-09-01","priority":"high","tags":["work"],"url":"https://github.com/me/proj","created_at":"2026-08-30"}
    ]}
  ],
  "next_id": 2
}

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Project Structure

Highly modular — easy to read and extend:

src/
├── main.rs        — terminal setup
├── board/         — data model (Task, Column, Board, Priority)
├── storage.rs     — load/save
├── app/           — state, task & board logic, key handlers
└── ui/            — rendering (board, footer, popups)
    └── popups/    — welcome, task form/detail, board manager, help

• board is pure data, storage is only I/O
• app handles all logic, ui only reads state

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Development

cargo check
cargo test -- --test-threads=1   # 14 tests
cargo build --release