A live kanban for coding-agent work: task files in stage directories are the only source of truth; a stdlib-only board narrates everything that happens to them — agents working in git worktrees, PRs opening on review, CI and Copilot state on the cards, drives of the app from a task's own branch, and an archive that is never a delete. Turn on team mode (BOARD_SYNC=1) and the truth is origin/main: moves commit and push themselves, every board pulls on a beat, and the person who claimed a card first keeps it.

Install into a repo

mkdir .task-manager && curl -L \
  https://github.com/12vectors/bench/releases/latest/download/bench.tar.gz \
  | tar -xz -C .task-manager
./.task-manager/start.sh        # wires the project (idempotent) and serves

No token, no clone: releases are curated artifacts that never contained bench's own cards or settings, so the board starts empty by construction.

The first run asks three questions it cannot answer for you — solo or team, which agent adapter, what command runs your tests — and writes manager/local/.env from the documented example, so every other setting is discoverable in your own copy. Bare Enter takes the default throughout; with no terminal (CI, a script) it asks nothing and install.py --setup asks later.

Commit .task-manager/ into the host repo — core is vendored on purpose, so clones work offline and updates show up in the host's own diffs.

The workflow brief ships as .task-manager/AGENTS.md — the cross-vendor name coding agents read natively — with CLAUDE.md beside it as a one-line compatibility pointer. Both live inside .task-manager/, so a host repo's own root AGENTS.md is never touched.

Update

./.task-manager/update.sh              # latest release
BENCH_REF=v2 ./.task-manager/update.sh # an exact release tag

The artifact is stamped with the repo it was built from, so updating needs no configuration; BENCH_SOURCE=<owner/repo> in manager/local/.env overrides the stamp. Updates replace manager/core/ and the top-level scripts wholesale and touch nothing else — tasks, plans, reference, and everything under manager/local/ (your driver, commands, prompt overrides, settings, state) survive every update. Then python3 .task-manager/install.py and restart the board. If the source repo has no published release yet, update.sh says so and changes nothing.

Working on bench itself

git clone git@github.com:12vectors/bench.git && cd bench && ./start.sh

A clone carries bench's own cards and local/ content — that is dev mode, not an install. (Installing from a clone anyway works: install.py clears the shipped cards on its first boot in a host repo.) Releases are built by ./release.sh from the manifest at manager/core/release-manifest: tag = v<VERSION>, one stable asset name (bench.tar.gz), contents at the tarball root — the two things the install one-liner above depends on.

The three-layer law

Core knows about tasks, worktrees, PRs and events. It knows nothing about any particular app (drivers do: manager/local/driver/start), agent vendor (adapters do: manager/core/adapters/), or project (manager/local/ does).

The consequence is what makes an update safe: update.sh replaces manager/core/ wholesale, and everything a project taught bench about itself lives outside it. Full docs in AGENTS.md; the adapter contract in manager/core/adapters/README.md.

License

MIT.