Minimalist Kanban

A lightweight Kanban board plugin for Obsidian. Boards are stored as plain Markdown files — no proprietary formats, no JSON blobs. Your data stays readable and editable as standard Markdown.

Inspired by the Kanban plugin. Minimalist Kanban aims to be a simpler, smaller alternative that covers the core workflow: lists, cards, drag-and-drop, and nothing else.

What it looks like

A board file is just Markdown with ## headings as lists and - [ ] items as cards:

---
kanban-plugin: board
---

## To Do
- [ ] Buy groceries
- [ ] Write documentation

## In Progress
- [ ] Build the thing

## Done
- [x] Set up project

The plugin renders this as a drag-and-drop board. Every change writes back to the same Markdown file.

Creating a board

Open the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + P) and run Create new Kanban board. This creates a new Markdown file with the required frontmatter and three starter lists.

You can also create a board manually — any .md file with this frontmatter will be opened as a board:

---
kanban-plugin: board
---

Features

• Drag-and-drop cards between lists, and reorder lists by dragging the grip handle
• Inline editing — click a card to edit its text
• Multi-line cards — use Shift+Enter to add line breaks within a card (configurable)
• Wikilinks and Markdown links render as clickable links in card titles
• Ctrl/Cmd+Click a link in a card to open it in a new tab
• Toggle view — switch between the Kanban board and the raw Markdown editor (Ctrl/Cmd + P → Toggle Kanban/Markdown view)
• Card context menu — right-click or tap the ⋮ button on a card to duplicate, move, archive, or delete it
• Create notes from cards — turn a card into a linked note via the context menu
• Archive — archive cards to move them out of the board without deleting them
• Checkboxes — cards are stored with - [ ]/- [x] syntax, compatible with Obsidian Tasks and Dataview. Optionally display checkboxes in the UI via Settings.
• Mobile support — touch-friendly drag-and-drop and always-visible menu buttons

Migrating from the Kanban plugin

Minimalist Kanban reads the same kanban-plugin: board frontmatter and Markdown format as the Kanban plugin. To migrate:

1. Disable the Kanban plugin
2. Enable Minimalist Kanban
3. Open your existing board files — they should render automatically

A few things to note:

• Old plugin metadata blocks (%% kanban:settings %%) are preserved in the file but ignored. They will be removed if you edit and save the board.
• Date/time card metadata and lane-level settings are not supported and will be dropped on save.
• All cards are stored with checkbox syntax (- [ ]/- [x]) for compatibility with Obsidian Tasks.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Show checkboxes	Off	Display checkboxes on cards in the board UI
Enter key adds new line	Off	When on, Enter adds a new line and Shift+Enter submits. When off, the behavior is reversed.
Prepend new cards	Off	Add new cards to the top of the list instead of the bottom

Building from source

npm install
npm run build     # Production build → main.js
npm run dev       # Watch mode with source maps
npm test          # Run unit tests (80 tests)
npm run test:e2e  # Run e2e tests (requires Obsidian 1.12+ with CLI)

License

MIT