Your first hour | kanman documentation

You do not need to set anything up to start. kanman already knows your team’s repositories, its board and what happened lately, so the fastest way to learn it is to talk to it. Each step below has a prompt you can copy into the chat and change as you like.

1. Look around (5 minutes)

kanman opens on Personal, your private chat with it. Only you and kanman see it. Your teams each have their own chat, shared by everyone in the team. You switch between them with the chip under the message box.

When you open a team’s chat, the team opens beside it with four tabs:

Tab	What it shows
Mind	The team’s board: its outcomes and stories, and its Memory, everything kanman knows about the team.
Habits	What kanman keeps doing for the team without being asked, and what it keeps an eye on.
Stories	What the team shipped, week by week, with what it cost.
Team	The ground rules: people, hours, budget, models, repositories, connections.

In your avatar menu, For you shows what is current for you alone: what waits on you, what kanman keeps an eye on for you, your habits and how you like to work.

The Tour of the app shows every part in detail.

2. Ask what is going on (10 minutes)

Start in Personal. kanman answers from its own records, with links to every story, run and merge request it names.

Try this in the chatIn Personal

What needs me?
How are my teams doing?
What did Sandbox Team ship this week?

Then switch to one of your teams and ask about the code. kanman answers with the files, merge requests and decisions it stands on.

Try this in the chatIn your team's chat

Where is the invoice export handled, and who knows that code best?
Why was the last release delayed?
New here: what should I read first in this repository?

3. Answer a question (5 minutes)

When kanman needs a person, the question is pinned over the message box, with the options it sees and the one it recommends. Click an option and kanman goes on. Each question is asked once, in one place; the same question also appears in Slack or Microsoft Teams if your team uses them, and your first answer counts everywhere.

No question for you yet? Nothing waits on you, which is the normal case. See Questions from kanman.

4. Hand kanman a small piece of work (20 minutes)

Describe something small and real in your team’s chat: a bug, a missing test, a small improvement. Paste a ticket or write a few sentences.

Try this in the chatIn your team's chat

The CSV export cuts names after 50 characters. Names can be up to 200. Please fix it and add a test.

kanman drafts a story with acceptance criteria and shows it as a card. Write it from the card and it lands on the board; moving it to Ready (or saying “start it”) starts the work. While it runs, one line in the chat tells you what kanman is doing right now; when your CI is green and kanman’s independent review approves, it merges and says so.

Your first story walks through it in detail, and Write requirements kanman can finish shows what makes a good first story.

5. Make one thing just for you (5 minutes)

In Personal, ask kanman to keep an eye on something for you. It tells you once, when it happens, and lets it go.

Try this in the chatIn Personal

Tell me when the next release is tagged
Every Friday at 16:00, tell me which of my merge requests are still waiting for review

The first is a one-off ask, the second a personal habit. Both show up on For you, where only you see them. See Personal and For you.

6. Tell kanman how you like to work (5 minutes)

kanman remembers what you tell it about yourself and works by it: when you focus, what you enjoy, how short you like updates, which language you prefer.

Try this in the chatIn Personal

Fridays until one I focus. Hold anything that can wait.
Short updates, please.
What do you know about me?

Only you see these notes, and only you can change them.

Where next

Your first week: follow the work, let kanman learn your team and start your first team habit.
Talk to kanman: everything you can say and ask.