Plain Text Kanban

An Obsidian plugin that turns simple nested markdown lists into fully interactive kanban boards, while keeping your files plain text and readable in any editor.

Note: This plugin was entirely developed with Claude Opus 4.6.

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for Plain Text Kanban
3. Select Install, then Enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create a folder at <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/plain-text-kanban/
3. Copy the three files into that folder
4. Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins

How to use

To open a board, right-click a markdown file in the file explorer and choose Open as kanban board from the context menu. The kanban view will load that .md file and keep the text file readable while giving you full board interaction.

File format

<!-- kanban-labels: {"bug":"#e03e3e","feature":"#2f80ed"} -->
- # To Do
	- ## Fix login page #bug
		Some description in **markdown**.
	- ## Add dark mode #feature
- # In Progress
	- ## Refactor API #feature
		- [x] Extract helpers
		- [ ] Write tests
- # Done

Columns are - # Title, cards are \t- ## Title, and everything below a card is its body. Labels are #hashtags in the card title. Colors and swimlane config are stored as HTML comments.

Features

Board & columns

• Horizontal scrolling board with fixed-width columns
• Add, delete, and archive columns
• Inline rename — click a column title to edit it
• Drag-and-drop column reordering with visual placeholders
• Card count badge per column

Cards

• Add, delete, and inline-edit card titles and bodies
• Full markdown rendering in card bodies (bold, links, images, lists, code, etc.)
• Interactive checkboxes, click to toggle - [ ] / - [x] directly
• Drag-and-drop within and across columns
• Auto-detected and clickable file paths (Windows & Unix) in card descriptions

Labels

• Tag-based labels derived from #hashtags in card titles
• Colored pills with auto-assigned or custom colors
• Add, remove, and rename labels inline
• Rename propagates across all cards on the board
• Inline color picker with live preview
• Contrast-aware text (auto black/white based on background)

Swimlanes

• Filter the board into multiple horizontal swimlanes by label
• Add/remove swimlanes and label filters with a searchable dropdown
• Special "no label" filter for untagged cards
• New cards auto-inherit the swimlane's filter labels

Settings

Setting	Description
Hide card counter	Hides the card count badge on columns
Hide "Add label" buttons	Hides the "+ Add label" button on cards
Hide "Add description"	Hides the body placeholder on empty cards
Show buttons on hover only	Archive/delete buttons appear only on hover
Hide swimlanes	Hides swimlane UI, shows a single unfiltered board

Other

• Open any .md file as a kanban via the command palette or the file context menu
• Switch back to the standard markdown editor with one click
• Works on desktop and mobile
• Themed with Obsidian CSS variables, adapts to any theme

License

Apache License 2.0