hand board cards to agents

hand board cards to agents a tagged card becomes a branch

A Kanban board in an Obsidian vault is the to-do list. Tag a card #agent in the Ready list and, within a minute, an agent works on it in its own worktree, on a branch named after the card. The card moves across the board by itself as the task runs, so the board always shows what the agents are doing.

what you need #

A board made with the Obsidian Kanban plugin, at ~/notes/Boards/App.md, with the lists Ready, In Progress, In Review, Failed and Done.
The obsidian-kanban connector. It is not built in: install or link it first (connectors), then pastor connector describe obsidian-kanban lists its keys.
The vault on the head’s disk. The connector runs where the job file is, on the head, and reads the board there.
~/src/app cloned on every machine that takes tasks, and on the head, where the connector’s hook checks each push and opens the PR with gh.

the job #

# ~/.config/pastor/jobs/kanban.toml
description = "Hand #agent cards on the app board to agents"
every = "1m"

[connector]
use = "obsidian-kanban"
board = "~/notes/Boards/App.md"
list = "Ready"
tag = "#agent"

[dispatch]
repo = "~/src/app"
worktree = true
branch = "kanban/{{ item.key }}"
max_tasks_per_run = 20
prompt = """
You are pastor task {{ task.id }}, started from the card "{{ item.title }}".

{{ item.body }}

Work on your own and do not ask questions. Do what the card asks, run the
tests, commit, and push with git push origin HEAD:kanban/{{ item.key }}.
Do not open a pull request and do not touch main.
"""

Each unchecked card in Ready that carries the tag is one item. Its key is a hash of the card’s text, so a card goes out once; edit the text and it is a new card. item.title is the card without the tag. When the card links a note ([[Login redirect]]), item.body is that note’s text, so a card can carry a long description. The branch has a fixed prefix, kanban/, so no card can point an agent at main.

A run sends at most 5 tasks unless max_tasks_per_run says more; 20 sends every tagged card at once. Cards past the free slots wait in the queue.

try it first #

Tag two cards, then ask for one run that creates nothing:

$ pastor connector try obsidian-kanban --job kanban  # the items the board gives
$ pastor tick --dry-run --job kanban  # what a run would create

JOB     OUTCOME  ITEMS  CREATED                            SEEN  DEFERRED  ERROR
kanban  dry_run  2      2155db486f75d7bb 480467041d2eecb8  0     0

In a dry run, CREATED lists the item keys a real run would turn into tasks. Leave the job to its schedule, or fire it now with pastor job run kanban.

what you see #

$ pastor task list

ID    STATE    PRIORITY  MACHINE   FLOCK    AGENT   MODEL  JOB     AGE  NOTE
t-13  running  normal    server-1  default  claude  -      kanban  1m   Add a --json flag to the export command
t-12  running  normal    desk      default  claude  -      kanban  1m   Fix the login redirect after sign-out

The connector ships a hook that moves each card as its task changes. A queued or running task puts its card in In Progress. A pushed branch puts it in In Review, with the number of the PR the hook opened. A task that stops without pushing puts it in Failed with the reason, and so does one whose summary says blocked or partial. The hook drops the tag as it moves the card, so a card is never sent twice.

## In Progress

- [ ] Fix the login redirect after sign-out (t-12, agent working on desk)

## In Review

- [ ] Add a --json flag to the export command (t-13 pushed kanban/480467041d2eecb8, PR #43, outcome: done)

cards that wait #

A card can wait for others. Give the note it links a depends-on list in its frontmatter:

---
stage: todo
depends-on: ["[[Session cache]]"]
---

The card stays in Ready, tag and all, until every note in depends-on says stage: done. You can tag a whole plan at once and the cards start in order.

next #

jobs and connectors
answer questions in a note: a second job on the same board
job files