Tour of the app

kanman keeps its surface small. Your workspace opens on the conversation with kanman, and everything else, a team’s board, a run, a story, a decision, a report, an incident, the audit log or a team’s Team tab, opens next to it. Your own settings and the workspace settings are pages of their own. You never lose your place: close a page and you are back in the conversation exactly where you left it.

The conversation and the pages beside it

When you open kanman, you see Personal, your conversation with kanman across all teams: what happened since your last visit, what needs you, and the box to write to kanman. Every team also has its own chat with kanman. The top bar names the chat you are in, right next to the workspace switcher; kanman’s questions for you are pinned over the message box. On a phone, a team’s chat hides that header to make room: the mind button (a brain icon labelled, for example, Open the mind of Sandbox Team) sits in the message box next to the chip (the team’s settings are the Team tab beside the Mind), and the messages scroll on behind the message box and the bar at the top, so you see as much of the chat as possible. Switch between Personal and the teams with the chip under the message box: Personal shows the conversation alone in the middle; a team’s chat moves the conversation to the left edge and opens the team’s overview beside it. See Personal and your team chats. Click a card in a message (a run, a story, a decision, a report or an incident) and its page opens; the card grows into the page, and closing the page folds it back into the card.

How a page opens depends on your screen:

Your settings and the workspace settings don’t open beside the conversation: they are pages of their own, centred on the screen, on every device. The ✕ next to the page title, or Escape in the workspace settings, takes you back to the conversation where you left it.

Every page that opens beside the conversation has a header with a Close button at the right:

• Close takes you back to where you came from. Escape does the same on a computer. In a team’s chat, the team’s board is part of the chat and has no Close; a story, a run, a report or the Team tab close back to the board. Switch to Personal with the chip under the message box.

The browser’s Back goes back one step, for example from a story to the board, and from the board to the conversation. A page you open from a link (Slack, Microsoft Teams, an email or a bookmark) opens beside the conversation too; Close then takes you to the conversation.

Everything kanman names is a link

Whatever kanman writes, it links what it mentions, so you never have to look for it: in messages, decision and approval cards, questions, story titles and descriptions, run pages, briefs and board cards. A story key such as INT-200 opens the story, a run such as run-pcqn its run page, a decision such as dec-we4z the chat that asked it, and incidents, outcomes, conventions and services open their pages too. Repositories, merge and pull requests (!3, #12) and commits open on your code host in a new tab. Only things your workspace really has become links: UTF-8 or ISO-8601 stay plain text, and so does anything inside code. The same links are in what kanman sends to Slack, Microsoft Teams, email and your code host, where they lead to the matching page in the app.

Point at a story, run or decision link (or move to it with the keyboard) and a small card shows what it is without leaving the page: a story’s title, its goal, its column and lane, its status and its latest runs; a run’s story, status, stage and merge request; a decision’s title, status and whom it waits on. On a phone, the first tap shows the card and a second tap opens the page.

The top bar

The top bar is a compact bar at the top of the screen and the same on every page: the workspace, the chat you are in and your avatar. There is no search field: finding things and jumping around starts in the message box, see Commands in the message box. The switcher opens as a sheet from the bottom of the screen.

On a phone, the conversation fills the screen and other pages open as sheets from the bottom:

Teams

Every team has its own chat with kanman. Open it with the chip under the message box: the chip lists Personal, then My teams with new messages and what needs you per chat, then All teams, folded away with a search field, and New team at the end. When another chat has something that needs you, the chip says so, for example 1 needs you, and its list shows for each team how many questions wait for you. On a large screen the team’s board opens beside its chat; on a phone, the mind button (the brain icon) opens it from the bottom. The overview of all teams is under All teams in search.

The team header

Every page of a team opens with the team’s header, one row above the page. The team’s name is at the top of its chat right beside it (to switch to another team, use the chip under the message box). On the left of the row:

• the tabs Mind (a brain icon: the board), Habits (a heart: what kanman keeps doing on its own), Stories (a star: the running week, its success stories and what to watch) and Team (the team’s settings); a team opens on its Mind; the tab you are in is filled in, also on a story or run page and on the Team tab. On a phone the tabs sit in a bar at the bottom of the team’s sheet, centred above the home indicator, each an icon with its name

A tab you opened before comes back at once when you return to it, exactly as you left it: the board scrolled where it was, the runs list at the same place, and still up to date.

On the same row, at the right (on a narrow window it moves under the tabs):

• the team status: Working (kanman is on it), Waiting for you (a decision is open), Idle or Paused · Resume, followed by how many runs are running, in review or need you, for example “Working · 1 running · 3 in review”
• the pause button next to the status: it pauses kanman for this team at once (running work finishes, nothing new starts) and offers Undo; while the team is paused, Resume in the status line starts it again. You can also ask kanman in the chat to pause or resume a team
• in a workspace that runs everything on its own runners, Waiting for a runner while steps wait for a free runner; select it to see how many and to open the runners

kanman tells you about the teams you are a member of; how much, you choose per team, see Notifications. To join a team, open it and click Join; see Team members.

To describe new work, write to kanman in the team’s chat (press N to jump to the box). See Talk to kanman.

The team page

The team page is a lean board that mirrors your tracker, with your columns and their roles: Backlog, Refining, Ready, In progress, Review and Done. Each column shows its name and the number of cards in it (story cards and outcome cards). A column with a work-in-progress limit also shows a small chip such as 4/3: four stories in progress against a limit of three, amber when the column is over its limit. Select the chip to change or remove the limit, or the count of a column without one to set it; when your tracker uses a different name for a role, an info icon next to the name tells you the role. Columns reach from the top of the board to its bottom, and the board reaches the edges of the team’s box: scroll sideways for more columns. Scroll down and the cards of all columns move together, while the columns and their names stay in place, so you always know where you are; cards fade out at the top or bottom edge while there are more beyond it. On a phone you see one column at a time with the columns next to it peeking in at both sides, so you know there is more to either side; swipe sideways to the next column, and scroll each column’s cards on their own. Cards show the story key, the title, the readiness and size and the latest run. Drag a card to another column, or use Move to on the card with the keyboard or on a touch screen.

The board shows no extra notes: kanman tells you in the team’s chat what it is doing and why, and when something needs you, a notice with what to do sits above the message box (see below).

Notices above the message box

When there is something you can do to keep a team’s work going, a small tinted notice peeks out from behind the message box of that team’s chat, with one short line and the action right next to it:

You only see the notices you can act on: approvals for everyone who works in the team, the others for workspace owners and admins. Everything kanman handles by itself, such as a story that is slow to start, a run it retries or a failing pipeline, it explains in the chat instead.

The colour says how much it matters: red when nothing can move until someone acts, amber when work waits for you, grey for a pause you chose. Several notices share one box: the most important one shows with +2; click it to see the others. Close a notice with ✕ and it stays closed for you, on all your devices, until the situation changes (for example a third story waits) or ends and comes back. Notices that concern the whole workspace, such as no runner being online, also show in Personal. Decisions that wait for you are not repeated here: the questions pinned over the message box and the cards in the chat show them.

Inside a team

Links to the older addresses still work: /teams/<team>/agents and /teams/<team>/runs open All tasks over the Mind, /teams/<team>/reports opens Stories, and /teams/<team>/routines and the former Automations page open Habits.

Two more pages belong to a team without a tab of their own:

Story page

Click a card to open the story (/teams/<team>/stories/<KEY>). The back link above the title, or the browser’s Back, takes you back to where you opened the story: the outcome’s board, a run or the conversation. It names where it leads, for example Back to Dependencies outcome. Opened from a link someone sent you, it leads to the team’s board. The page shows the story’s open questions first (with Answer, Let kanman decide and Not relevant, as long as no run works on the story), then the acceptance criteria with their status, the test plan, the readiness checks and every run of the story. Your changes save on their own: next to the readiness the page says Saving…, then Saved, or that a change could not be saved and was undone. A story with the class Fixed date shows its due date on its board card, for example Due Nov 30.

Run page

The run page (/teams/<team>/agents/<run-key>, each tab at /agents/<run-key>/<tab>) is where you follow the work. Above its tabs you always see the status, a decision that waits for you and the actions Stop, Retry and Open pull request. Each tab has an address of its own that you can share:

• Overview: what kanman is doing right now, the steps diagram from plan to merge, the key numbers with the cost against the run budget, and the pull request with CI and merge
• Steps: the time per step, the checks of each step, the progress and every attempt with why an earlier one failed
• Work log: what the coding tool did, live
• Cost & details: the cost per attempt, the plan with the approaches kanman weighed, and where the run ran

See The run page.

Questions from kanman

kanman asks people only for what you intend, a choice only you can make, or access it does not have. Its questions for you are pinned at the bottom of the chat, over the message box, one at a time: Personal pins the questions of your teams, each labelled with its team (for example platform-ui · PU-301), a team’s chat pins that team’s. A switch over the questions in Personal shows All teams instead of My teams: you can read every team’s questions there, and Join on a question of another team lets you answer it. Each question names its story, says why kanman cannot settle it itself and offers the options it sees; you can also answer in your own words. kanman asks each question once. Answer in the app, or in Slack or Microsoft Teams once connected. See Questions from kanman.

Audit

The Audit log (workspace switcher, owners and admins; it opens beside the conversation) lists every recorded event, newest first, with filters for team, run, actor, event type and time range. Export the entries you see as CSV or JSON. See Audit export format.

Settings

Settings come in three levels. Each level has its own entry point and a grouped list of sections on the left (on phones, a section button opens the list as a sheet). A small label above each page title tells you the level: You, Workspace · or Team · . The search field at the top of the list of sections (Ctrl+,, Cmd+, on Mac) finds every page and every single setting of all three levels and opens it highlighted.

Settings save as soon as you change them, on every level: a switch or a choice at once, a text field when you leave it or press Enter. A short Saved appears next to what you changed, and Undo in the message at the bottom takes the change back for a few seconds. If something can’t be saved, it goes back to how it was and says so with Try again. A few things that only make sense as a whole keep one button that says what it does, such as Connect, Save key, Apply branding, Save environment and single sign-on. Changes with consequences, such as keeping the audit log for less time, ask first.

You

Open Your settings from your avatar menu at the top right. These settings belong to you and follow you into every workspace (/account/<section>). They open as a page of their own; ✕ next to the title takes you back to the conversation:

Workspace

Open Workspace settings from the workspace switcher (/settings/<section>). They open as a page of their own, without the conversation beside them; ✕ next to the title or Escape takes you back to the conversation:

Team

Open the Team tab in the team header (/teams/<team>/team/<section>, G then S). It opens on the Team page, beside the team’s chat, and the team header stays visible while you are there. Links to the older address /teams/<team>/settings/... still work.

The Team tab has seven short pages in two groups. Each page fits on one screen: every setting is one line with a one-sentence explanation, its current value and a Default mark while you have not changed it. Click a line to open its editor in a side panel; rarely used options sit under More options.

What kanman knows (memory, skills and the sources it reads) and the team’s services are on the Mind tab under Memory, see Memory and skills. Connecting Claude Code or Codex is under Your settings > API tokens, see Use kanman from Claude Code or Codex.

Reviewing merge requests, maintenance, watching main, the rituals, the daily update and answering mentions are built-in habits on the Habits tab. The team’s maintenance findings are on its Stories tab. Links to the older team pages (Policy, Autonomy, Budgets, Approvals, Executor, Models and coding, Checks and delivery, Repositories and tracker, Chat and mentions, API and webhooks, Channels, Mentions, After merge, Personal, Appearance) still work and land on the new page and line; links to the former Memory and skills, Conventions, Knowledge, Context and Services and on-call land on Mind > Memory, and links to Claude Code and On your machine on Your settings > API tokens.

Commands and keyboard

The message box is also the command line. Type / in it, or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) from anywhere, to jump to a team or any settings page, to start New team or to search your conversation with /search. While you write, a story, run, decision or incident key shows the matching item above the box, ready to open. N jumps to the box of the conversation to write to kanman, G then T opens the switcher, and ? lists every shortcut. See Commands in the message box and Keyboard shortcuts.