Coral vs Vibe Kanban: the maintained alternative
Vibe Kanban’s company shut down in April 2026. Coral is actively shipped, works with the agents you already run, and tells you the moment one needs you.
Updated
If you’re looking for a Vibe Kanban alternative, start here: on April 10, 2026, Bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban, announced it was shutting down. Coral is actively developed and keeps shipping. It shows every agent that needs you in your Mac’s notch and on your iPhone, and you answer with one key or tap, wherever the agent runs.
Vibe Kanban lives on as open source, community maintained, and its local workspaces still work. But it starts agents inside its own browser UI, and phone access went through the hosted cloud that the shutdown wound down. Coral leaves your agents where you already run them and makes sure none of them sits waiting while you look elsewhere. When you run many agents, that wait is the real bottleneck.
As of October 2026, from the shutdown announcement and the Vibe Kanban repo.
Summary
| Vibe Kanban | Coral | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Company shut down April 2026; community maintained | Active, released by us |
| Works with the agents you already run | No. Vibe Kanban starts them; Claude Code runs headless from its own pinned version | Yes. Any terminal, tmux, VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf or the Codex app, started the way you always do |
| Tells you when an agent needs you | Sounds and browser notifications | The notch, a chime, Mac banners, iPhone pushes, Live Activity and Apple Watch |
| Answer approvals | In Vibe Kanban’s web UI | One key (1, 2 or 3) in the notch, or a tap on your iPhone |
| Answer from your phone | Remote access from a phone went through its hosted cloud, which the shutdown wound down | Yes. Free answers wait on your Mac until you press Return; Pro sends them straight to the agent |
| Price | Free, Apache-2.0; paid subscriptions ended | Free forever; Pro $8 a month billed yearly or $12 monthly |
| Worktrees, board and review | Yes. A git worktree per workspace, diffs with inline comments, app preview, PRs | Not built in. D for the diff and P for a pull request when a task is done |
Why developers pick Coral
- It keeps shipping. Coral gets regular releases. Vibe Kanban’s company is gone, its paid plans ended, and its hosted kanban issues, comments, projects and organisations were removed after 30 days. Its future now depends on community maintainers.
- Nothing to migrate. Coral doesn’t ask you to move agents into a new app. Keep starting them in tmux, Ghostty, iTerm2, Terminal or your editor’s terminal. Coral connects through hooks, lists exactly which files change and backs them up first.
- One key and it’s back to work. Every agent lands in one list in your notch, the one that has waited longest on top. Press 1, 2 or 3 to answer a permission prompt or a question. You see what the agent wrote just before asking and every option in full. ⌘Z takes it back within two seconds.
- Your iPhone and Apple Watch, on Free. Alerts when an agent needs you or finishes, a Live Activity, and every agent’s conversation to read. You can answer from your phone on Free too; it waits on your Mac until you press Return there. On Pro it reaches the agent right away, and you see when it’s delivered.
- Private without a cloud. No Coral account and no Coral server that sees your code. Phone messages are encrypted end to end, signed with a key that Face ID protects, and deleted from the relay once delivered. See Privacy and security.
- Agents on your servers. On Pro, agents on your SSH servers and dev containers show up in the same notch as local ones. See Servers.
Coral also shows a one-line summary with time and tokens when a task finishes, and U shows what’s left of your Claude Code, Codex, Copilot and Grok plans, with when a limit runs out at your pace. See Features.
Where Vibe Kanban fits
Vibe Kanban still makes sense if you want a browser UI that owns the whole task and you’re fine relying on community maintenance:
- It runs agents in worktrees. Pick the repos, describe the task, and an agent starts on its own branch with a terminal and dev server. Coral doesn’t create worktrees or split work across agents.
- Review in one UI. Diffs with inline comments that go back to the agent, and a preview of your app with devtools.
- More agents on its list. Gemini CLI, Amp, Cursor Agent CLI, Droid and Qwen Code, which Coral doesn’t support.
- Not just Mac. It’s a local server with a browser UI. Coral is Mac only.
If you stay, the latest version has a data export, and the repo has a self-hosting guide for the hosted pieces. The README still describes kanban issues, so check what your version does before you rely on the board.
Which should you pick
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| You want a tool that’s actively maintained | Coral |
| You run agents in the terminal or your editor and they keep waiting on you | Coral |
| You want to answer agents from your iPhone or see alerts on your Apple Watch | Coral |
| You use the Codex app or the Grok CLI | Coral |
| You want a board and agents in worktrees from a browser UI, community maintained | Vibe Kanban |
| You use Gemini CLI, Amp or Droid, or you’re not on a Mac | Vibe Kanban or Claude Squad |
If you also want what Vibe Kanban did for worktrees:
- Claude Squad. A free terminal app that gives each agent a tmux session and a worktree. It runs the normal
claudecommand, so Coral sees its agents. - Conductor. A Mac app with one worktree per workspace, diffs, PRs and merge.
- By hand.
git worktree addplus one terminal tab per agent, with Coral telling you who’s waiting. Our guide to running multiple Claude Code agents walks through it.
All comparisons are on /compare.
Questions
Is Vibe Kanban shut down?
The company behind it, Bloop, shut down in April 2026. The project continues as open source and community maintained, and local workspaces keep working. Hosted remote services, including kanban issues, comments, projects and organisations, were removed after 30 days.
Is Coral a Vibe Kanban alternative?
Yes, for knowing when each agent needs you and answering it, and Coral is actively maintained. It doesn’t plan tasks or run agents in worktrees. Pair it with Claude Squad or git worktree for that side.
Can I use Vibe Kanban and Coral together?
We haven’t tested it, so we won’t promise it. Vibe Kanban runs Claude Code headless and answers approvals in its own UI, not a terminal, so answer those in Vibe Kanban. Coral covers every agent you run outside it.
What agents does Vibe Kanban support?
Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, Amp, Cursor Agent CLI, OpenCode, Droid, CCR and Qwen Code. Coral supports Claude Code, Codex (the CLI or the app), Copilot CLI, OpenCode and the Grok CLI.
What does Coral cost?
Coral is free, with no end and no card. Pro is $8 a month billed yearly or $12 monthly, with a 7-day free trial, or Founder Lifetime as a one-time payment. See Pricing.