codeCodeman vs Vibe Kanban: live terminals or review workspaces
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What Vibe Kanban isWhat Codeman isSide by sideChoose Vibe Kanban if...Choose Codeman if...Using bothVibe Kanban is built around reviewing agent work: each workspace gets its own git worktree, a chat with the agent, a diff you can comment on inline, and a button to open a pull request. Codeman is built around keeping the agents' own terminals alive in tmux and reaching them from any device, so pick Vibe Kanban for the plan, review and merge loop, and Codeman for long-running sessions you supervise from a phone.
What Vibe Kanban is
Vibe Kanban is a local web app, started with npx vibe-kanban, that runs coding agents in workspaces. A workspace gives an agent a branch in its own git worktree, a terminal and a dev server. You talk to the agent in a chat panel that supports image attachments and approval flows, review its diff and leave inline comments that go straight back to the agent, preview the app in a built-in browser with devtools, and open or merge a pull request with a generated description. It supports Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, Claude Code Router and Qwen Code, can connect MCP servers and exposes its own MCP server, and offers sound and browser push notifications. It is Apache-2.0 licensed.
Its situation changed this year. Bloop, the company behind it, announced on April 10, 2026 that it was shutting down and that the project would continue as community-maintained open source. The announcement scheduled the hosted services for issues, comments, projects and organisations for removal after 30 days, and since v0.1.44 (April 24, 2026) the project kanban board routes to an export-only page. Local workspaces kept working, and v0.1.45 shipped on September 19, 2026. The README still describes kanban features, so check the shutdown announcement before relying on them.
What Codeman is
Codeman is a self-hosted web server that runs agent CLIs inside persistent tmux sessions and streams each real terminal to a browser. It supports nine CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Pi, Grok Build, DeepSeek Harness, OMP) plus plain shells, flags waiting or blocked agents on their tabs and through web push, and for Claude sessions adds auto-resume after a usage limit and live subagent windows. Cron jobs, Docker containers and remote SSH sessions are built in. It needs Node.js 22+ and tmux, runs on macOS and Linux (Windows through WSL2), and is MIT licensed.
Side by side
| Vibe Kanban | Codeman | |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Local web app | Self-hosted web app |
| How you see the agent | Chat panel, plus a separate terminal | The CLI's own terminal, streamed live |
| Git worktree per task | Yes, automatic | No: sessions run in a case directory you pick |
| Diff review with inline comments | Yes | No |
| Pull requests and merge | Yes | No |
| Built-in app preview | Yes, with devtools and device emulation | Partial: local URLs open as proxied web tabs, no devtools |
| Agents | 10 listed; overlap with Codeman is Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode | 9 plus shell; adds Antigravity, Pi, Grok Build, DeepSeek Harness, OMP (Agent CLIs) |
| Phone access | Partial: docs describe pairing through Vibe Kanban Cloud; post-shutdown status unclear | Yes: touch terminal, QR login; you choose the network route (Remote Access) |
| Notifications | Yes: sound and browser push | Yes: tab alerts, desktop, web push with optional Approve and Deny for Claude |
| Agent survives a server restart | Not documented | Yes, agents live in tmux |
| Resume after a usage limit | Not documented | Yes, Claude sessions only |
| Scheduled jobs | Not documented | Yes (Cron Jobs) |
| Containers and remote hosts | Partial: can run on a remote server, opens projects in VS Code over SSH | Yes (Docker Cases, Remote SSH Sessions) |
| Windows | Yes, native | WSL2 only |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
Choose Vibe Kanban if...
- Your bottleneck is review. A worktree per task, inline diff comments that feed back to the agent and the PR step are its core, and Codeman has none of them.
- You want to see the running app next to the agent, with devtools, without leaving the page.
- You use Copilot, Amp, Cursor, Droid or Qwen Code, which Codeman does not run.
- You are on Windows and do not want WSL.
- You are comfortable with a community-maintained project and have checked that the features you need are still in the current release.
Choose Codeman if...
- You want to watch the agent's real terminal rather than a chat rendering of it, and type into it directly.
- You supervise agents from a phone and want push notifications that work with no tab open, optionally answering a Claude permission prompt from the lock screen (Notifications).
- Sessions should survive a closed browser, a dropped network and a restart of the server, and keep going overnight (Keeping Agents Running).
- You need Docker isolation per project, agents on remote hosts, or prompts on a schedule.
- You run a CLI Vibe Kanban does not list, such as Antigravity, Pi, Grok Build, DeepSeek Harness or OMP.
Using both
They do not share state. Vibe Kanban picks a free port by default and Codeman listens on 3000, so both run side by side on one machine. A reasonable split: Vibe Kanban for tasks that end in a pull request, Codeman for long-running sessions you follow from your phone.
Checked against Vibe Kanban's README on 2026-09-25 (28,185 stars). Spotted something out of date? Open an issue.