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Product Overview ​

What is Kendo? ​

Kendo is a streamlined project management tool for development teams. It's a modern alternative to Jira, Linear, and Asana — the issue tracker that lives in your terminal.

Website: kendo.dev

Core Proposition ​

Project management tools are either bloated (Jira) or pretty but limited (Linear). Kendo sits in the sweet spot: powerful enough for real teams, simple enough that you don't need a Jira admin. Through a deep MCP integration, your AI coding assistant can read issues, log time, move cards, and plan sprints — all from the terminal.

Key Features ​

Features marked (ALPHA) are built but gated off and not yet generally available — they appear here as internal source-of-truth only. Keep them out of landing-page copy, social, and any public/external messaging until the CEO clears the tag (see "Off-Limits for External Messaging" in CLAUDE.md).

  • Issue tracking — Board, backlog, and overview views with statuses, priorities, epics, blocking relations, and assignees (human or AI agent). Multi-select issues in the backlog to move or reassign them in bulk.
  • Sprint planning — Scope sprints, assign work, unfinished issues carry over automatically
  • Epics — Group related issues, set dates, track progress across sprints. Epics have Open, In Progress, and Completed status tracking.
  • GitHub integration — Copy a git checkout -b KD-NNNN-title command from any issue (no GitHub connection required); branches matching {PROJECT}-\d+ auto-link to issues on push. Connect multiple GitHub repos to a single project and pick which repo a branch targets. Plus PR sync and webhook-driven lane transitions — code merges, card moves to Done.
  • OAuth login — Sign in with Google or GitHub. Link/unlink providers in profile settings.
  • Two-factor authentication — TOTP-based 2FA with QR code setup and recovery codes. Each custom role can independently require 2FA — set enforce_2fa per role to lock down admins, billing approvers, or any sensitive role without forcing it on everyone.
  • BYOK AI keys — Tenants and projects can bring their own Anthropic or OpenAI API keys instead of using shared keys.
  • Issue templates — Reusable templates for issue creation, managed per project in settings.
  • Labels — Project-scoped labels for issues. Define and color labels in project settings, apply them from the issue sidebar or directly on board cards, and filter the board and backlog by them. Changes broadcast live across clients.
  • Real-time updates — WebSocket-powered live updates via Laravel Reverb. Issues and announcements update in real time without page refresh.
  • MCP server — A deep MCP integration that connects to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Claude Desktop. Tools cover the full board (issues, comments, sprints, epics, lanes, time tracking, branches, reports), structured resources expose project context (current sprint, board state, issue detail) for agent consumption, and the first MCP App widget — a read-only "Today" card rendered inline in Claude Desktop — is shipped. An interactive board widget is next. (See research/mcp-apps-kendo-pilot.md and the 2026 improvement roadmap in research/mcp-tools-improvement-roadmap-2026.md)
  • Hand to Claude — Hand an issue to an autonomous Claude multi-agent (coordinator + planner + implementer + reviewer) that plans, implements, runs tests, and opens a PR — triggered from a button on the issue. A pre-flight "Analyse for Claude" check first grades the issue against a clarity/scope/observability rubric and gates the hand-off on a minimum score. When the agent's PR opens, the issue auto-moves to Review through the existing GitHub lane triggers.
  • Feature Planner (ALPHA) — A chat-based AI assistant that helps break a feature idea into well-structured, properly scoped user stories through back-and-forth conversation — searching existing issues and code for context before drafting — so a rough request becomes ready-to-create issues.
  • Time tracking — Built-in, not a plugin. Log per issue, filter by project or date range, export to XLSX. Board cards and backlog rows surface estimated vs. logged time at a glance, with remaining time derived from the two.
  • Audit logging — Hash-chained, tamper-proof logs with point-in-time user snapshots. Every action recorded.
  • Teams & roles — Multi-project support with custom role-based access. Tenants define their own roles with granular per-permission scopes (None, Own, All). Admin and Member are the default system roles. Two-tier authorization. See ADR-002 for the design rationale.
  • CLI — Go-based command-line tool for managing issues, sprints, and time entries outside the browser.
  • Reports — Triage inbox for incoming feedback, requests, and bugs. Team members submit lightweight reports; team leads review, reorder (drag-drop), and filter by status (Pending, Promoted, Dismissed). Pending reports can be promoted into real issues — optionally using AI story generation to draft the title, description, type, and priority from the report content — or dismissed. Reports can also arrive programmatically via the project API (see Project API tokens below, source-tagged Api).
  • Project API tokens — Scoped API tokens that let external applications connect to a Kendo project programmatically. Paired with report ingestion, an outside app — your own product, a support widget, a monitoring tool — can pipe bug reports and feedback straight into a project's triage inbox over the API. This is the "Kendo is the project layer any app can pipe into" capability.
  • Notifications — In-app notification system with per-user preferences, mark read/unread, and unsubscribe options.
  • File attachments — Upload files to issues and comments.
  • EU hosting — Amsterdam-hosted, database-per-tenant isolation. GDPR-compliant by architecture.

Tech Stack ​

  • Dark-themed UI with light mode support
  • Design system with kendo-red (#c8553a) as accent color
  • Sora for all UI text and headings, JetBrains Mono for code/labels
  • Compact, dense interface — collapsed sidebar at 64px, expanded at 230px
  • Vue 3.5 + TypeScript 5.9 + UnoCSS frontend
  • Laravel 12 + PHP 8.4 backend, MySQL database
  • Multi-tenant (database-per-tenant, subdomain routing)

What Makes Kendo Different ​

  1. Terminal-first — The MCP server means your AI assistant manages your board directly. No browser tab, no context switch. Developers lose 4.5 hours/day to context switching — Kendo eliminates the PM tool switch entirely. (See research/developer-pm-sentiment-2026.md)
  2. Developer-first — Built by a developer, for developers. No enterprise bloat, no certification programs, no consultants needed. Fast, keyboard-driven, dark-themed.
  3. Nothing extra — Time tracking, audit logging, AI, MCP — built into every tier. No Toggl subscription, no Tempo add-on, no enterprise upsell for compliance features.
  4. European by default — Amsterdam-hosted, Dutch-owned, database-per-tenant. Your data stays in the EU — no upgrade required. No competitor in the developer PM segment offers EU hosting at this price point. (See research/eu-data-sovereignty-demand-2026.md)
  5. Opinionated simplicity — Fewer features, better defaults. No custom workflows with 47 status types. Ship software, don't configure tools.

Target Users ​

See user-personas.md for detailed profiles.

  • Small to mid-size development teams (3-20 developers)
  • Solo developers and indie hackers who want structure without overhead
  • Teams already using AI coding tools who want their project management to keep up
  • Teams migrating away from Jira who want something lighter but not too minimal

Current Stage ​

In active development. Core project management is functional: issues, board, backlog, sprints, epics, labels, time tracking, GitHub integration, MCP server, audit logging, multi-tenancy, teams & roles. Built in the Netherlands, hosted in Amsterdam.

One feature is still gated as alpha pending general availability — keep it out of public messaging until cleared: Feature Planner (chat-based AI feature planning).