Backlog system options research (2026-07-06)

Research question: a personal, cross-project backlog with (a) a visual kanban dashboard, (b) full AI CRUD (Claude Code), (c) self-hosted, (d) modular/low-maintenance, (e) multi-domain — software dev, freelance client management, business development, property management, general projects. Researched via three parallel sonnet subagents (web research; claims below not all hands-on-verified — see caveats).

Decision + pilot plan: vault-backlog-pilot-plan.

Requirements that emerged during framing (not in the original ask)

Recurrence is first-class, not an afterthought: property maintenance (winterize spigots, HVAC/electrical/plumbing checkups via Woodfin) is date-driven, and a kanban alone doesn't do it.
ADHD constraint is load-bearing: out of sight = forgotten. A board that must be opened, or a hook that fires only when a session starts, does not by itself surface anything. The system needs a push/surfacing layer (this became the central finding of the perspectives review — see vault-backlog-pilot-plan).
P0–P3 priority + effort metadata for a morning "most important + quick wins" view; someday status that backgrounds items without deleting them.
Fifth-backlog trap: Forgejo issues, OpenSpec changes, build-plan docs, and vault open-items already exist. A new system must consolidate the "where did we leave off" question, not add another place to check.

Options evaluated

Storybloq (github.com/Storybloq/storybloq) — inspiration, not a fit

Cross-session context persistence for AI coding: .story/ dir of plain JSON + markdown (tickets/phases/notes/lessons/handovers), git-tracked, no server. 53 MCP tools + full CLI parity + importable TS library. v1.5.0 (2026-07-05), ~2.5 months old, 653 stars, 2 contributors, PolyForm Shield license (source-available, not OSI).

Disqualifiers: the kanban dashboard is a Mac App Store app (Linux user — the visual requirement is unmet); per-repo and coding-session-continuity focused (overlaps memsearch + journal hooks, ignores non-code domains); young; repo-scoped, against the global-capture direction (ADR-015 era).

Worth stealing: file-per-entity storage, handover-document concept, board-watches-files-live pattern, MCP tool surface breadth.

Hosted self-hosted PM tools

Planka — best of the hosted class. Trello-grade UI (~12K stars), lightweight Docker deploy, board-per-domain, AGPL. Key differentiator: 5+ community MCP servers (mgertz/mcp-planka, bradrisse/kanban-mcp, etc.) giving Claude Code full CRUD with zero integration work. Named fallback if the markdown-native route fails.
Vikunja — strongest horizontal PM design (projects as top-level units, custom fields, kanban/gantt/table views, documented REST API), v2.0 2026, but no CLI/MCP — hand-wired REST only. Heavier deploy (Go + MariaDB).
Plane — Linear-class, first-party MCP server, workspace-level cross-project views, 49K stars. Built for team sprints/velocity; overkill + heaviest ops for a solo user. Good SWE-team option, wrong scale here.
Forgejo project boards (existing infra) — weaker than hoped: repo-scoped (can't span domains), tea CLI does not cleanly expose board CRUD, board API underdocumented. Fine as the code-level tracker (issues), not as the portfolio board.
Kanboard (maintenance mode, 2013 UX, no AI path), Focalboard (abandoned standalone, June 2024), Huly (no API/CLI/MCP found), Taiga (successor limbo), OpenProject (enterprise-heavy), WeKan (no advantage over Planka) — all ruled out.
Notion / Airtable / Linear — fail self-hosting outright.

Structural cost of any hosted tool: backlog items live outside markdown — no wikilinks to how-to notes, no Graphify edges, no memsearch adjacency, a second source of truth. The Notion rental-property pattern (item note referencing contractor/how-to notes) is exactly what a DB-backed kanban can't express.

Markdown / agent-native

Backlog.md (MrLesk/Backlog.md) — best standalone agent-native tracker. Tasks as markdown+YAML files, agent-first deterministic CLI, web + TUI kanban, user-level ~/.backlog/<slug>/ workspaces spanning repos. 5.8K stars, MIT, active. Cost: a second markdown store outside the vault with its own schema. Devil's-advocate correction: Obsidian wikilinks do resolve into its files, so the "no wikilinks" dismissal was overstated — it is the primary fallback and the design template for the CLI ergonomics (backlog task create "...").
beads (steveyegge/beads) — 18.7K stars, git-backed issues with dependency DAG, MCP support, excellent for code work but repo-centric and code-marketed; wrong shape for property/client domains.
vibe-kanban (BloopAI) — multi-agent orchestration kanban; post-commercial transition (Bloop shutdown 2026-04) = maintenance risk; orchestration-focused, not general PM.
kanban-md, agent-kanban, taskmd, VS Code Agent Kanban — smaller/younger variants of the same file-per-task + YAML pattern; confirm the pattern is the 2026 consensus for AI-agent task tracking, none clearly beats Backlog.md.

Obsidian-native (the chosen lane)

Obsidian Bases + board plugins (Base Board by mderazon; obsidian-bases-kanban by xiwcx; Kanban Bases View) — kanban views over note frontmatter: columns map to a property (e.g., status), drag-drop writes back to frontmatter. Actively maintained 2026, built on the Bases custom-view API (~May 2026). Each card = a normal vault note → wikilinks, facets, Graphify, memsearch all apply. Caveats (unverified hands-on): multi-property filtering, ordinal sort (P0–P3 must not sort lexically wrong), drag-write reliability, and mobile rendering (custom Bases views are a known mobile weak spot — expect desktop-only) all need a spike before commitment.
mgmeyers obsidian-kanban — de facto unmaintained; stores board state in markdown lists (fragile for external edits). Skip.
TaskNotes / obsidian-pm — same note-per-task + frontmatter pattern with their own view layers; alternatives if Bases board plugins disappoint but a plugin dependency remains either way.
Tasks + Dataview — good read-only reporting layer, weak for agent-driven mutation; not a primary store.

Comparative verdict

Vault-native (task-type notes + Bases board views + thin deterministic CLI) wins on every axis except maturity-of-dashboard: one system instead of a fifth backlog, matches the proven Notion property pattern verbatim, items become graph nodes wikilinked to how-tos, AI CRUD is nearly free via existing os-vault plugin machinery, self-hosted/synced by construction. Fallback #1: Backlog.md (if the Bases board spike fails). Fallback #2: Planka + community MCP (if markdown-native fails altogether or a standalone web/mobile dashboard becomes a hard requirement). Forgejo issues remain the code-execution tracker underneath, referenced from vault tasks.

The perspectives panel (devils-advocate, simplifier, implementer, premortem) materially reordered the build — push/surfacing layer first, board second, CLI minimal — see vault-backlog-pilot-plan for the verdict and the plan.

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