ralph-ban

A ralph loop sets a target and works until it's done. ralph-ban makes that target a kanban board.

Terminal kanban built with Bubble Tea, backed by beads-lite's SQLite database. Five columns (Backlog, To Do, Doing, Review, Done) with vim-style navigation. The board pans horizontally when the terminal is too narrow. Cards sync across the bl CLI, Claude Code hooks, and other TUI sessions via 2-second polling.

My mate said I should have named this Gas-Ban, but it's not nearly that weird. Planner helps break down the tasks ralph-ban claude --plan. Orchestrator delegates to workers, reviewers, and oracles ralph-ban claude. Keep Orchestrator working until ToDo/Doing/Review are moved to Done ralph-ban claude --auto. That's about it.

Install

Requires Go 1.25+.

go install github.com/kylesnowschwartz/ralph-ban@latest

Or build from source:

git clone git@github.com:kylesnowschwartz/ralph-ban.git
cd ralph-ban
go build .

Usage

Initialize a project, then open the board:

ralph-ban init --demo    # create project with a demo board (Conway's Game of Life)
ralph-ban                # open the board

Claude Code orchestrator

ralph-ban ships a Claude Code plugin with hooks and agents. ralph-ban init extracts them into .ralph-ban/plugin/ and .claude/agents/.

ralph-ban claude                    # batch mode (pauses for human merge approval)
ralph-ban claude --auto             # drain the board without intervention
ralph-ban claude --continue         # continue most recent session
ralph-ban claude --resume           # interactive session picker

Keybindings

? toggles full help. Ctrl+z suspends the TUI (resume with fg).

Navigation

Key	Action
h / ←	Focus left column
j / ↓	Move cursor down
k / ↑	Move cursor up
l / →	Focus right column
/	Search cards

Cards

Key	Action
n	New card
e	Edit card
d	Delete (press twice to confirm)
z	Zoom card detail
Enter	Move card right
Backspace	Move card left
u	Undo last move
+ / -	Change priority

Development

Requires just for task running. Uses a go.work workspace with ../beads-lite for local development.

just build     # build
just test      # run tests
just run       # build and launch TUI
just lint      # vet + staticcheck
just release   # tag, push, create GitHub release

License

MIT