Start here: everything Orbit is missing, and where to help

[imshashank]

Orbit is a free, realtime, keyboard-first task manager. Apache-2.0, self hostable, no billing code in the repository and no plan to add any.

The core is built and in daily use. What follows is everything we know is missing, organised so you can find something that fits the time you have. If you are here to contribute, this post is the map.

Read these first

• CONTRIBUTING.md for how to set up and send a pull request
• CLAUDE.md for the rules that are not negotiable. The short version: Bun is the package manager and the script runner, there are no comments in code, any is a lint error, no em-dash characters anywhere, and bun run verify must be green
• docs/architecture.md for how a keystroke gets from a browser to Postgres and back out to every other open tab

The eight milestones

Each one has an epic issue explaining the shape, and the individual issues underneath are independent.

Analytics people trust, epic #174
The weakest surface in the product. The query engine underneath supports ten chart dimensions, four scopes and stacking, and the page uses almost none of it. There is no date filter anywhere in Orbit. The charts have no axes and no tooltips. The page runs about thirteen uncached queries per load. One of these is a confirmed bug where a single data point renders a blank chart.

Slack, properly, epic #185
Slack is one directional today. Orbit talks, Slack listens, and link unfurling is the only thing coming back. Missing: a distributable Slack app so self hosters stop building their own, creating issues from messages, a slash command, thread sync, action buttons, and personal DMs instead of channel spam.

The extension surface, epic #192
Orbit ships several database tables that no application code reads or writes: webhook, webhook_log, automation_rule, audit_log, api_key, plus the module and intake tables. The schema design is done and reviewed. These are unusually good contribution targets because the hardest decision, how to model it, has already been made.

Docs as a real wiki, epic #199
The docs product has a tree, versions, comments, per subject access, share links and full text search. It has no wiki links, no backlinks, and no collaborative editing, so two people editing one doc lose each other's work. In a product whose whole premise is realtime, that last one is the notable gap.

Planning parity, epic #205
Templates for issues and projects, a layer above projects, releases and changelogs, recurring issues, a timeline view, and duplicate detection. Orbit stores project start dates, target dates, milestone dates and issue due dates, and has no screen that puts any two of them on the same time axis.

AI and agents, epic #214
The MCP server is good and is the whole story. Everything here is subject to one rule: Orbit stays fully usable with no AI provider configured and no outbound request to anyone.

Reach and access
Mobile, internationalisation and accessibility. Every user-facing string is hardcoded English. The board cannot be operated from the keyboard, in a product that calls itself keyboard first.

Community and repo health
The project has no releases, no tags and no release notes. Documentation says the same thing in four places. Nobody has ever set Orbit up from the documentation alone without already knowing the answers.

If you have an hour

Start with good first issue. Those have the file paths written into the description and a stated fix. Some current ones:

• #175 a chart renders blank with one data point, and the exact line causing it is quoted
• #180 bar charts truncate to eight rows and say nothing
• #130 the theme toggle has no keyboard shortcut
• #218 per workspace agent instructions over MCP

If you have never run it

#226 asks you to set Orbit up following only the documentation, and to report everywhere it went wrong. That is a real contribution and it needs somebody who does not already know the answers. Especially valuable on Windows or Linux, since nearly all existing experience is macOS.

If you want something large

The epics say which pieces have no architectural risk. Mobile #124, internationalisation #125, the timeline view #211 and the importers #127 and #229 are all large, well defined and safe.

How to claim something

Comment on the issue. We will assign it. If you go quiet for two weeks we will unassign it and say so on the thread, with no hard feelings, because a stalled assignment blocks everyone else.

For anything larger than a bug fix, agree the shape on the issue before writing code. Issues labelled needs design mean exactly that, and a pull request against one without a design comment first will be hard to merge however good the code is. Issues labelled ready are agreed and safe to start.

Where to put what

• Issues for bugs and concrete work
• Discussions, Ideas for a feature whose shape is not agreed. Describe the workflow that is painful, not the widget you want
• Discussions, Q&A for how do I
• SECURITY.md for anything that should not be public

What Orbit will never do

No pricing, no billing, no plans, no seats, no usage limits. There is no billing code in this repository and there is no scaffolding for a future one. No telemetry that phones home. And no second way to do something Orbit already does, which is the constraint that keeps the rest coherent and the one most likely to get a feature request declined.