Choose and tune a preset

Pick the preset that fits how much your team wants kanman to do on its own, and adjust single settings without losing track.

A preset is a starting point for a team’s policy. It bundles the settings that shape kanman’s “personality”: how many stories it works on in parallel, whether it may file work itself, whether maintenance runs, and whether a manifest is required. Safety settings are the same in every preset.

You pick a preset in the policy step when you set up a team; the setup suggests Balanced. You can switch at any time under Settings > Policy.

The five presets

Preset Parallel runs Who files work Maintenance Acceptance spec required Default denied paths
Trial 1 Humans only Off No infra/**, **/*.tf, .github/workflows/**
Focused 1 Humans only Off Yes same as Trial
Balanced 2 Humans and kanman Off Yes same as Trial
Autonomous 4 Humans and kanman Off Yes .github/workflows/**
Hardening 2 Humans and kanman On (2 per day) Yes same as Trial

“Humans and kanman” means kanman may also bring in work itself. Today that is maintenance work with the Hardening preset; findings that are not on the allowlist still come to you as proposals.

What never changes

These hold in every preset and cannot be switched off:

  • Executors can never change .kanman/acceptance/**.
  • The diff guard, the clean-room run and the sandbox are always on.
  • Touching production data, changing the security posture and overspending always stop and ask.
  • Denied paths and diff limits are checked before the run and again on the final diff.

Which preset when

Trial is for the first week with a new repository, especially one without an acceptance manifest. It relaxes the spec requirement so you can see kanman work before you invest in a manifest. Evidence packs say plainly when no outcome proof exists.

Focused is for teams that want kanman to work only on what people filed, one story at a time. A good choice once the manifest is in place but trust is still being built.

Balanced fits most teams after the pilot. Two stories in parallel, kanman may propose work, all gates on. If you are unsure, choose Balanced.

Autonomous is for teams with good test coverage and a clear review routine who want throughput. Four runs in parallel, and infrastructure paths are no longer denied by default, only CI workflows. Review the denied paths before you switch.

Hardening is Balanced plus maintenance mode: kanman scans for vulnerable and outdated dependencies, lockfile drift and broken documentation links, and files small, behaviour-preserving stories at a steady pace.

Parallel runs are capped by the team’s plan: Pilot 3, Team 5, Self-hosted 20, and 1 for a team without a plan. A preset never exceeds the cap.

Switch presets

  1. Open the team and go to Settings > Policy.
  2. Choose the preset. Each preset card says what it does, for example 2 stories at a time.
  3. If the team is custom, confirm Switch preset: your changes to concurrency, intake, maintenance and denied paths are replaced. The change applies right away to new runs; runs already in progress keep the policy they started with.

Switching a preset resets the personality settings to that preset’s values. Budgets, approvals, working hours, routing and authority overrides are not part of presets and stay as they are.

Tune single settings

You can change any setting after choosing a preset. As soon as a preset setting differs, the badge reads Custom (based on Balanced) (or whichever preset you started from). That is expected, and it keeps the origin visible.

Common adjustments:

Goal Change
Protect more areas Add globs to denied_paths, for example db/migrations/**
Smaller pull requests Lower max_changed_files and max_changed_lines
Less approval overhead Set plan_approval to by_size with plan_approval_min_size M
Ask more often for a kind of decision Raise it in authority_overrides, for example "split_story": "ESCALATE"

Every setting is described in Policy settings. Every change is written to the audit log with your name and the new policy version.

  1. Week 1: Trial, while you add the acceptance manifest.
  2. Weeks 2 to 3: Focused, with plan approval always.
  3. After that: Balanced, plan approval by_size.
  4. Optionally Hardening for repositories that need steady upkeep.

Last updated: January 1, 0001

Open kanman