Vibe Kanban: Revolutionary Orchestration or Overhyped Complexity?

An honest review from someone who was skeptical from the first video.

Let's be direct: watching the Vibe Kanban demo video for the first time feels overwhelming.

Claude Desktop → Task creation → Kanban board → Claude Code → Git worktrees → Code review → Merge

That's a lot of steps to write code.

Developers who use Claude Code directly know the workflow: talk to it. It writes code. We iterate. Simple. Why would I add a project management layer on top of that?

After a week of investigation—reading GitHub issues, Hacker News threads, and testing the workflow—the picture becomes clearer about who actually needs this and whether it delivers real value or is just developer FOMO fuel.

Here's what emerged from that research.

Table of Contents

1. What Vibe Kanban Actually Is
2. The Problem It's Trying to Solve
3. How It Actually Works
4. Who This Is Really For
5. The Good: What It Does Well
6. The Bad: Real Criticisms
7. The Ugly: What They Don't Tell You
8. My Honest Verdict

1. What Vibe Kanban Actually Is

Vibe Kanban is an AI agent orchestration platform. It's a Kanban board interface that manages multiple AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor CLI, Amp) working in parallel.

The pitch: Instead of running one Claude Code session at a time, run five agents simultaneously on five different features.

The promise: "10X your productivity."

2. The Problem It's Trying to Solve

Here's the core thesis from their website:

"AI coding agents are increasingly writing the world's code and human engineers now spend the majority of their time planning, reviewing, and orchestrating tasks."

If you believe this future is here (or coming soon), then the problem is obvious:

Sequential execution is slow.

Traditional workflow:

1. Ask Claude Code to build Feature A (10 min)
2. Wait for completion
3. Review and merge
4. Ask Claude Code to build Feature B (10 min)
5. Wait for completion
6. Review and merge
7. Ask Claude Code to fix Bug C (10 min)

Total: 30+ minutes of wall clock time.

Parallel workflow with Vibe Kanban:

1. Create three tasks on the Kanban board
2. Assign agents to each
3. All three run simultaneously in isolated worktrees
4. Review all three when done
5. Merge

Total: ~10 minutes of wall clock time.

That's the value proposition. Whether it delivers depends entirely on your workflow.

3. How It Actually Works

Installation

npx vibe-kanban

That's it. It launches a web interface (localhost or remote tunnel).

The Worktree Magic

This is the clever part. Each task gets its own git worktree - a complete, isolated copy of ya production codebase on a separate branch.

main branch
├── worktree-1 (Feature A - Claude Code working)
├── worktree-2 (Feature B - Codex working)
└── worktree-3 (Bug fix C - Gemini CLI working)

Agents can't conflict because they're literally working on different copies of the code. When done, you review and merge each branch.

The Workflow

1. Create a task on the Kanban board
2. Write a description (what you want built)
3. Assign an agent (Claude Code, Codex, etc.)
4. Click "Start" - it spins up the agent in a worktree
5. Monitor progress in the web UI
6. Review the diff when complete
7. Merge or reject the changes

MCP Integration

You can connect Claude Desktop to Vibe Kanban via MCP. This lets you create tasks by chatting with Claude Desktop:

"Create a task to add user authentication to the dashboard"

Claude Desktop → Vibe Kanban → Claude Code (or your chosen agent)

Note: This is where my initial overwhelm came from. But the MCP integration is optional. You can use the Kanban board directly without Claude Desktop.

4. Who This Is Really For

Let me be blunt about this.

You MIGHT Need Vibe Kanban If:

You Probably DON'T Need Vibe Kanban If:

The honest truth: If you're building something like I am - a single product with deep, interconnected features - Vibe Kanban might add more complexity than it solves.

5. The Good: What It Does Well

Parallel Execution Actually Works

The git worktree approach is genuinely clever. I've seen people run 4-5 agents simultaneously without conflicts. When your tasks are truly independent, this is a massive time saver.

Agent Flexibility

Supporting Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor CLI, and Amp means you can:

• Use Claude Code for complex architecture
• Use Codex for boilerplate
• Use Gemini for documentation
• Match tools to tasks

Code Review Enforcement

The built-in diff viewer forces you to review before merging. This is actually good discipline. AI-generated code needs human review, and Vibe Kanban makes it a required step.

Active Development

14.6k GitHub stars. 154 releases. 33 contributors. Y Combinator backed. This isn't abandonware - it's being actively maintained and improved.

It's Free

Open source. Apache 2.0 license. You only pay for the underlying AI services.

6. The Bad: Real Criticisms

A dig through GitHub issues and Hacker News threads reveals what real users complain about:

Merge Conflicts Still Happen

"Vibe Kanban enables parallel execution but does not solve the logical problem of merge conflicts."

Git worktrees prevent file-level conflicts, but semantic conflicts still occur. If two agents both modify authentication logic differently, you have to reconcile it.

MacBook Performance Issues

"Running multiple agents on MacBook caused slowdowns after 4 concurrent tasks."

Each agent consumes significant CPU and memory. Parallelism has hardware limits.

Overkill for Simple Tasks

"The Kanban board adds friction: creating a card, typing a description, assigning an agent, and managing the board."

For "change the button color" tasks, this is absurd overhead. Direct conversation is faster.

Dangerous Mode by Default

Vibe Kanban runs agents with --dangerously-skip-permissions or --yolo flags by default. This enables autonomous operation but means agents can execute commands without approval.

Some users flagged this as a security concern for DevOps tasks.

Initial Setup Overhead

You need to:

• Configure each agent's credentials separately
• Set up MCP if you want Claude Desktop integration
• Learn the Kanban interface
• Understand git worktrees

That's not trivial onboarding.

7. The Ugly: What They Don't Tell You

Privacy Concerns (Now Fixed)

Early versions collected analytics by default - including email addresses and GitHub usernames - without clear consent. After HN backlash, they made it opt-in. But it damaged trust.

Agents Still Hallucinate

"If agents hallucinate or get stuck in loops, Vibe Kanban cannot magically fix them. It only provides a better view to watch the crash happen."

This isn't a criticism of Vibe Kanban specifically - it's just reality. Orchestration doesn't fix agent quality issues.

The "10X" Claim

The "10X productivity" claim assumes:

• Your tasks are parallelizable
• You have hardware to run 5+ agents
• Ya production codebase is structured for independent work
• You don't spend 10X time on merge reviews

For many developers, 2-3X is more realistic. Still good, but not the headline.

Windows Support Is Rough

Multiple GitHub issues about Windows failures with default settings. If you're on Windows, expect friction.

8. My Honest Verdict

The Bottom Line

Vibe Kanban is a real tool solving a real problem for a specific audience.

That audience is:

• Teams managing multiple AI agents
• Projects with many independent features
• Developers comfortable with git worktrees
• People who want structured code review

That audience is NOT:

• Solo developers on single projects
• People who prefer conversational coding
• Quick-fix, iteration-heavy workflows
• Anyone who found this article because the demo overwhelmed them (like me)

My Take

I'm not adopting Vibe Kanban.

Not because it's bad - it's genuinely well-built. But my workflow is conversation-first. talking to Claude Code like a collaborator. We iterate in real-time. Adding a Kanban layer would break that flow.

If I managed a team of AI agents across multiple repositories with clear feature boundaries, Vibe Kanban would be compelling. That's not my situation.

Who Should Try It

The Real Question

The hype around Vibe Kanban reflects a deeper question:

Is the future of development "orchestrating AI agents" or "collaborating with one AI partner"?

Vibe Kanban bets on orchestration. Multiple agents. Parallel execution. Human as manager.

My bet is on collaboration. One powerful agent. Deep context. Human as partner.

Both might be right for different people.

Try It Yourself

# Install
npx vibe-kanban

# Opens at http://localhost:3000

Give it 30 minutes. Create three tasks. Run them in parallel. See if it clicks.

The tool is free. The only cost is your time figuring out if it fits your workflow.

Written after a week of skeptical investigation, during which Claude Code and I built features the old-fashioned way: together, one conversation at a time. Sometimes the boring way is the right way.

Sources:

• Vibe Kanban GitHub
• Official Website
• Hacker News Discussion
• Hands-On Review
• ByteIota Analysis