Roles per stage
15 built-in roles and 7 pipelines: a role, a model, a substrate (API or CLI) and reasoning effort for each stage — with human checkpoint gates and review loops.
Need a maintained home for your agents?
Vibe Kanban popularised the idea of orchestrating AI coding agents on a kanban board. In 2026 its backing company (Bloop) announced it was winding down; the project continues as community-maintained open source (Apache-2.0). If you're weighing a commercially-backed, actively-shipped alternative, here's how Octopush maps to what you already know — and what it adds. Details below are as of their public docs.
— The mental model
Your board concepts, translated.
The kanban metaphor maps almost one-to-one onto Octopush. You don't relearn how to work — you get roles, cost visibility and a native app underneath.
| Kanban-board concept | In Octopush |
|---|---|
| A task / card | A mission — the brief a crew executes |
| Columns & task flow | A Direct pipeline — stages with roles, models and gates |
| The board / all agents at a glance | Mission Control (⌘⇧M) — every run across every workspace |
| Task history & attempts | The per-mission Logbook — worked time, spend and savings |
| Agent per card, isolated | Real git worktrees per workspace, sandboxed execution |
— What Octopush adds
Beyond moving cards across columns.
A board tells you where a task is. Octopush directs how it's done, what it costs, and where a human signs off.
Cost & savings ledger
Live token meters, per-model cost, budgets by scope — and a ledger that leads with dollars saved vs an all-premium baseline.
Seatbelt sandbox
Agents run write-confined under the macOS seatbelt sandbox — free, never paywalled. Security isn't an upsell.
Routines
Schedule crews on Days × Times with an optional shell fire-condition; detached runs survive quitting the app, then notify you.
Per-stage model routing
Plan cheap, implement strong, review in between — route each stage to the right model instead of paying premium for everything.
BYOK, any provider
Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek and local Ollama — two wire protocols and custom base URLs for gateways. Local-first, zero telemetry.
— Honest deltas
Where the trade is real.
Octopush is macOS-only — if you need Linux or Windows, the open-source Vibe Kanban codebase may still fit better. And Octopush is a closed product with a pricing model, not open source: free tier (Talk / Run / Review unlimited, BYOK, free sandboxing, 25 Direct runs a month, one at a time) and Pro at $20/mo for unlimited, parallel and detached runs. What you get in return is a commercially-backed native app shipped weekly, rather than a project now dependent on community upkeep.
A maintained home
for your crew.
A native macOS app — Apple Silicon & Intel, signed updates. Bring your own keys: Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, or a local model with Ollama. Free to start.