FredrinWhat happened: Bloop, the company behind Vibe Kanban, announced on April 10, 2026 that it was winding down, and Vibe Kanban became a community-maintained open-source project under Apache-2.0. What you should do: nothing urgent — the app still runs locally and the repo is still there — but the remote services are gone, and if you depend on this daily you should decide whether community maintenance is enough for you.
This guide covers what actually changed, what still works, and — if you decide to move — how Vibe Kanban's concepts map onto Fredrin's. We'll be straight about the parts where Vibe Kanban is still the better answer.
What actually happened to Vibe Kanban?
Bloop couldn't find a business model. Founder Louis Knight-Webb put it plainly in the announcement: "the vast majority are free users and we couldn't find a business model that we could get excited about." He also wrote that the team is "not out of ideas and believe there is a non-commercial future for the project."
So this is not a rug-pull. The code was released to the community under Apache-2.0 rather than archived, which is about the best outcome a wind-down can have.
What still works, and what went away?
Still works: the local app. npx vibe-kanban still starts it, agents still run in isolated git worktrees, diff review with inline comments still works, and the built-in preview browser with devtools and inspect mode is still there. The repo is public and forkable.
Went away: the remote services, retired 30 days after the announcement — synced kanban issues, comments, projects and organisations. Vibe Kanban is now a fully local application. If your board lived across two machines, it doesn't anymore.
The real question is maintenance. Bug fixes and features now arrive on volunteer time. For a hobby project that's fine. For the tool you run your working day through, it's a bet on who shows up.
What did Vibe Kanban get right?
Worth saying clearly, because a lot of the current crop of agent orchestrators is standing on it: Vibe Kanban shipped the board-of-agents idea early and shipped it well. Worktree-per-task isolation so parallel agents don't collide. Inline comments on the diff. A built-in preview browser with device emulation. Support for a genuinely wide set of agents — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode and more — instead of betting the product on one vendor.
If you're evaluating alternatives, judge them against that bar, not against a strawman.
How do Vibe Kanban's concepts map onto Fredrin?
The mental model carries over almost directly, which is why migration is mostly retyping rather than rethinking:
| Vibe Kanban | Fredrin | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Task on the board | Ticket | Same atom: one unit of work, one agent session. |
| Agent profile / executor | Runtime | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, OpenCode and others — picked per ticket. |
| Worktree per task | Worktree per ticket | Unchanged. Every ticket gets its own branch and worktree. |
| Local-only app | Desktop app + synced board | Agents still run locally on your machine; the board syncs across devices. |
| Task description | Plan + acceptance checks | The plan is a live checklist the Worker ticks off as it verifies each item. |
| Diff review | Review column + pull request | Fredrin pushes a branch and opens a real PR; CI status flows back onto the card. |
The one genuinely new idea to absorb is the last row. Vibe Kanban's loop ends at a reviewed diff on your machine. Fredrin's ends at a merged pull request — the ticket auto-completes when the PR merges.
How do I actually move a board across?
There's no import tool, and honestly the mapping is simple enough that one wouldn't buy you much. In practice:
- Bring your agent, not your config. Fredrin is bring-your-own-subscription — it logs into the Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Copilot plan you already pay for, the same posture Vibe Kanban had. No API keys to provision.
- Retype the open tasks. Only the ones still live. A dead board is not worth migrating, and this is a good moment to close the tasks you were never going to do.
- Point it at the same repo. Fredrin creates its own branch and worktree per ticket, so it coexists with anything else you have checked out. Nothing about your repo needs to change.
- Write acceptance checks on the first ticket. This is the habit that pays. State the command that proves the work is done, and the Worker runs it and reports the real exit code instead of self-grading.
- Keep Vibe Kanban installed. It's free and it's local. There is no reason to uninstall it while you decide.
Should you switch at all?
Not necessarily, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Stay on Vibe Kanban if you want software you can read, fork and self-host, you're comfortable on community maintenance, or you specifically rely on the built-in preview browser with devtools and inspect mode — that's genuinely good and Fredrin's screenshot previews are not the same thing.
Move to Fredrin if this is load-bearing in your working day and you want it maintained, you missed the synced board when the remote services were retired, or you want the loop to continue past the diff into a pull request with CI status on the card.
FAQ
Is Vibe Kanban dead? No. The company behind it wound down; the project continues as community-maintained open source under Apache-2.0. The local app still works.
Do I need to migrate right now? No. Nothing is being switched off — the remote services already went, 30 days after the April 2026 announcement. What's left is local and will keep running.
Can I keep using the same coding agents? Yes. Fredrin dispatches Workers through swappable runtimes — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode and others — on a subscription you already pay for.
Is Fredrin open source? No, and that's a real trade-off against Vibe Kanban rather than a footnote. If open source is the requirement, the community fork is the closer fit.
Will my worktrees conflict? No. Fredrin creates its own branch and worktree per ticket, so it sits alongside your existing checkouts and anything Vibe Kanban left behind.
Fredrin is in closed alpha on macOS. BYOS — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Copilot runtimes. If Vibe Kanban's wind-down has you looking for a maintained home for the same workflow: fredrin.com.
