Open source. Local-first. No account.
Signboard is a kanban app that writes Markdown files.
Your work stays portable, scriptable, and private.
Why build Signboard?
I built Signboard to help me get more done, locally, and not be dependent on the cloud.
Inspired by the “file over app” philosophy, and my love of kanban, Signboard needed to exist.
Each card in Signboard is a Markdown file in a folder on your computer. As you move cards from one list to another the Markdown file moves between folders.
In this modern world of LLMs, agents, CLI, and MCP servers you can directly interact with all of your Signboard data seamlessly on any desktop platform.
Turn cards into executables.
Click to zoom
Calendar and This Week
In addition to the default kanban view, Signboard also has a Calendar and a unique “This Week” view that displays cards and tasks that are due on a specific day.
Features
You won’t believe everything Signboard already does.
Due Dates
Cards and tasks on cards can have due dates.
Custom Labels
Add as many labels, each with their own color, as you’d like.
Multiple Boards
Open multiple boards in tabs to manage more than one project at once.
Custom Schemes
Each board can have a personality all its own.
MCP Server
Interact with your boards, lists, and cards using the LLM of your choice.
CLI
Try signboard help to get started.
Notifications
Get notified when cards or tasks are due.
Keyboard Shortcuts
For those that like to keep their hands in one place.
Duplicate cards
Create card templates and quickly duplicate them.
Archive cards
Clean up the clutter by archiving cards you no longer need.
Dark Mode
Yes. It has dark mode. Oh, and you can customize it.
Search & Sort
Quickly find the cards you’re looking for.
Install Signboard
New releases every Friday.
Signboard is free for personal use.
devlog
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Signboard 1.1.0 adds Trello and Obsidian import, new color schemes
This morning I released Signboard 1.1.0 which includes Trello and Obsidian import, new color schemes, the ability to archive entire lists of cards (and the list itself), and other improvements. Importing from Trello was always possible (but only partially supported). Now Signboard can import far more data from Trello board exports. The Obsidian import works
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Small detail in Signboard… as you drag a card it begins to slightly tilt in the direction that you’re dragging. Makes me happy. Signboard 1.1.0 is coming tomorrow and it will include curated color themes (so aesthetic) and importing from both Trello and Obsidian. And a few other nice new things.
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Signboard has had a hidden secret from the beginning, you can import data from Trello. Starting in 1.1.0, which will ship this Friday, that feature will no longer be hidden. Oh, and you’ll also be able to import from Obsidian and its leading community kanban plugins also.
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John O’Nolan on Ghost’s CLI
John O’Nolan added a new CLI to Ghost called ghst: We’ve spent 10+ years focusing on having a clean, well designed interface for Ghost. It’s something we care a lot about, and spend a lot of time on. But within about ~1hr of using Ghost via Claude/CLI, it was hard to imagine going back to
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Giles Turnbull on Signboard
Giles Turnbull: Colin Devroe released Signboard, a lovely little local kanban board app for your Mac. Each board is just a folder, and each card is just a text file, and when you move cards, it moves files. So deliciously simple. 😊 Thank you Giles.
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Signboard is officially released
In September 2025 I wrote about Signboard and had started scratching away at making an app that I had wanted for a long time. Since then, I’ve been using the app and I’m so happy that it exists and it is really fun to work on. At each opportunity, I’d add a feature, fix a
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Signboard running on Ubuntu and Windows 11. Bug fix release coming Friday.
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Signboard 1.0.0 is available now. Free for personal use. One-time payment if you use it commercially. I hope people like it. I’ll write more about it soon.
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Just released Signboard 0.4.0 that adds due dates to cards and lays the foundation for labels and other card metadata. I’m so happy to have due dates since Signboard is now my daily driver. The next build will be a code refactor and bug fixes from this release.
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Signboard – A kanban app that writes Markdown files
Update March 2026: Signboard 1.0 is available now! I’ve wanted this for a long time – a kanban style productivity desktop app that writes Markdown files to disk. And that is what Signboard is. It looks like this. And here is this board represented on disk as directories and files. You can grab a copy
