Styx vs Vibe Kanban
Vibe Kanban is an open-source board for planning coding work as issues and handing each to an agent in its own worktree. Its company, Bloop, shut down in April 2026 and the project is now kept going by its community. Styx covers the same core, parallel agents in worktrees with review, as a native Mac app that is actively developed.
Side by side
| Styx | Vibe Kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Mac (Apple silicon); Windows coming | A local web page (npx) or self-hosted with Docker |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor | Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Cursor, Amp, OpenCode, more |
| Price | Free | Free and open source (Apache 2.0) |
| Each agent isolated | Own git worktree and branch | Git worktree, branch, terminal and dev server per workspace |
| Scope of one window | Every project you work on | Board issues mapped to the repositories you pick |
| Review | Diff with per-hunk accept and reject; checks before landing | Diff with inline comments; pull requests or local merge |
| Your editor | Imports recents, keybindings and theme; opens files back in it | Opens in your configured editor, including over SSH |
| Secrets | In the macOS Keychain; agents get scoped, expiring access | Not part of its docs |
| Production access | Agents ask; you approve for a set time; Touch ID for live systems | Not part of its docs |
| Audit log | Every request, approval and use, append-only | Not part of its docs |
| Deploy targets | Vercel, AWS, Google Cloud, Supabase, GitHub, SSH | Not part of its docs |
| Cloud workspaces | No: everything runs on your Mac | None since its servers shut down |
| Team collaboration | No | Removed with the cloud shutdown |
| Issue tracker | No | Its own issues and sub-issues |
“Not part of its docs” means we could not find it in Vibe Kanban's own material on 29 September 2026, not that it can never be done with it. Tell us at hello@heystyx.com if something here is wrong and we will fix it.
Where Vibe Kanban is ahead
- Open source. Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, so you can change or fork it.
- More agents. It runs more agent CLIs, including Amp, Copilot and Qwen Code.
- Board planning. Break work into issues and sub-issues before handing them out.
Where Styx is different
Agents never hold your keys
Useful agents need real things: a deploy, a database, a server. In Styx the credentials stay in your Mac’s Keychain. When an agent wants production, it stops and asks; you approve it for a set time, with Touch ID for anything live, and the access ends on its own. Every request, approval and use goes into a log nobody can edit.
Every project, one window
Styx is built around switching between everything you work on: each project, its agents and the ones waiting on you, one keystroke apart. Nothing is organised around a single repository.
On top of your editor
Styx brings in your editor’s recent projects, keybindings and theme, and opens any file back in it with one key. It is not trying to be the place you write code.
One honest limit: this is a guardrail, not a sandbox. Agents run as you, on your Mac, and an agent that deliberately goes around Styx’s tools is not stopped by them.
Which to choose
Choose Vibe Kanban if you want free, open-source, board-first planning and are comfortable with community maintenance. Choose Styx if you want an actively developed Mac app for parallel agents, with production kept behind an approval.
Download Styx for Mac. It is free. See every comparison.
Questions
Is Vibe Kanban shut down?
Its company, Bloop, shut down on 10 April 2026 and ended the hosted features. The open-source app still runs locally and is maintained by its community.
What is a good Vibe Kanban alternative?
If you used Vibe Kanban to run agents in parallel worktrees, Styx does that as a native Mac app, with every project in one window and approvals before agents touch production.
What is an agentic development environment (ADE)?
An app for managing AI agents that write code, rather than for writing code yourself: several agents in parallel, each isolated on its own branch, with a place to see who needs you and to review what they did. Warp coined the term in June 2025.