rota vs Vibe Kanban
Vibe Kanban is a kanban board for coding agents. You plan work as issues on a board, create a workspace per issue (a branch, a terminal and a dev server), run an agent in it, review the diff in the UI and open a PR. It is Apache-2.0 and starts with npx vibe-kanban. Checked 2026-10-26 against Vibe Kanban commit a019cebf (repo version 0.1.45; latest npm release 0.1.44, 2026-04-24).
Its README opens with “Vibe Kanban is sunsetting.” The company behind it announced on 2026-04-10 that it is shutting down; the project continues as community-maintained open source and the hosted services were to go after 30 days. Check the repo’s current state before you build a workflow on it.
The short version
- Pick Vibe Kanban when you want a browser UI: a board, inline diff comments, a preview browser, and a choice among ten or more agents, with no setup beyond
npx. - Pick rota when you want a terminal workflow where the backlog is your tracker, a full test run on the merged result gates every merge, and the project keeps what it learned between sessions.
- Both put each agent in its own git worktree and branch. They differ in what sits above that: a UI for steering agents, or a process for queuing, verifying and merging their work.
Side by side
| Vibe Kanban | rota | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Web UI (local app, self-hostable) for running coding agents in workspaces | A Go binary plus /rota-* skills that run inside Claude Code or Codex |
| Unit of work | A kanban issue, then a workspace for an agent to execute it | A backlog item (or tracker issue), one per worker at a time |
| Parallel agents | Several workspaces; limits not documented | Orchestrator plus two to five standing workers (parallel rounds) |
| Isolation | Each workspace has a branch, terminal and dev server; worktrees implied by the DISABLE_WORKTREE_CLEANUP setting |
One git worktree per worker, reused across issues; per-slot ports and database suffix |
| Verification before merge | You review the diff and leave inline comments; test gating not documented | Merge gate runs test.full on a scratch merge of the PR, then merges on a pass (review and ship) |
| Who merges | You, after review on GitHub | The orchestrator, through the gate. Workers open PRs and never merge |
| Backlog / tracker | Built-in kanban issues | BACKLOG.md, GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Linear or It’s a Plan (issue backend) |
| Memory across sessions | Not documented | KNOWLEDGE.md and DECISIONS.md in the repo (learning) |
| Agents and models | Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, CCR, Qwen Code | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode |
| Interface | Browser UI with preview, devtools and diff view | Terminal only |
| Platforms | npm package; a macOS source build and Windows notes appear in the README; no platform list | Linux and macOS; Windows through WSL2 |
| Install | npx vibe-kanban |
brew install l4ci/tap/rota or the install script, then rota skills install |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
Where Vibe Kanban is stronger
- A visual surface. The board, the diff view with inline comments sent back to the agent, and the built-in preview browser with devtools and device emulation have no terminal equivalent in rota.
- Agent choice. Ten listed agents against rota’s three, including Copilot, Cursor and Gemini CLI. rota’s market review listed more adapters as a gap.
- Low setup. One
npxcommand and an authenticated agent. rota needs a binary, installed skills,rota setup, and for rounds a terminal host. - Team planning on a board. Issues can be prioritised and assigned in the UI. rota leaves planning to your tracker.
The caveat is the project’s status. Its maintainers announced a shutdown of the company and its hosted services, and the repo has no release newer than April. Commits were still landing on 2026-10-26.
Where rota is stronger
- A gate on the merged tree.
rota worker gateruns your full suite on a scratch merge before anything lands. Vibe Kanban documents diff review, not test gating. - Unattended rounds.
rota round wait,rota keepalive runand the hooks keep a round going for hours across restarts and usage limits (unattended rounds). - Several accounts.
round.accountsmaps slots to separate Claude config homes, androta round assignavoids an account that is cooling down (parallel rounds). - GitLab and your own tracker. GitLab, Jira and Linear sources work today. The market review recorded self-hosted GitLab as the most upvoted open request on Vibe Kanban.
- Durable knowledge.
/rota-learnwrites gotchas toKNOWLEDGE.md, and/rota-workand/rota-reviewread them back./rota-deciderecords hard boundaries the reviewers enforce (learning, decisions).
Sources
- Vibe Kanban repository and README: features, agents, install, license, commit history.
- Shutdown announcement: 2026-04-10 company shutdown, community-maintained continuation, hosted services removal.
- Supported coding agents: the agent list.
- npm registry entry: latest published version 0.1.44.
- rota market review, October 2026: star count and top requests.
More comparisons: how rota compares.