A self-hosted personal kanban canvas — every board laid out in one spatial area instead of one board at a time. Capture a thought in a keystroke, advance it a column at a time, pan across the canvas. Single-user, no accounts, no cloud.

docker compose up        # → http://localhost:8787

That's the whole thing: one Deno + SQLite container serving the API and a dependency-light Vite/TypeScript frontend. Keyboard-first throughout.

Why it looks and behaves this way: DESIGN.md · PRODUCT.md. Useful? Support it via ❤️ GitHub Sponsors or Patreon.

• One spatial canvas of draggable boards — a pinned top-left anchor board, the rest snap to its right and below. Pan/zoom with inertia; minimap + canvas scrollbars.
• Keyboard-first capture & create — N new card · ⇧N new board · A advance · J/K move · ⌘K palette · / search. The top-bar New ▾ menu mirrors it for the mouse.
• New cards land where you expect — in the active board (click any board to target it), else the Inbox board. The New-card menu shows the target as a → <board> hint.
• Calm, deadline-aware cards — title, optional date (coloured by deadline), comment count.
• Labels — colour-coded tags (colour derived from the text); filter the whole canvas by one or more labels from the top-bar funnel, a card's chip, or ⌘K.
• Paste a link — the card titles itself from the page; the URL drops into notes. Works for articles (og:title/<title>) and YouTube (oEmbed). Existing URL-titled cards backfill.
• Bespoke date picker, inline board/column rename, card-detail sheet with notes + comments.
• Hidden Archive — cards done ≥ 10 days auto-move there (swept server-side, headless).
• REST API for external card/board/column management — see server/API.md.
• Live canvas — a change from any source (the REST API, the archive sweep, a second tab/device) streams to every open board over SSE and updates it without a reload.

One container (Deno serves the API and the built frontend on port 8787), pulling the image CI publishes to Docker Hub:

docker compose up                              # pulls umagistr/mk
docker run -p 8787:8787 -v mk-data:/data umagistr/mk   # or run it directly

The SQLite database persists in the mk-data volume (/data/mk.db). Override the port with MK_PORT. To build from source instead, uncomment build: . in docker-compose.yml (or docker build -t mk .).

micro-kaiten ships single-user / localhost by default with no auth. To put it on the internet, set a login passphrase:

MK_AUTH_SECRET="a-long-random-passphrase"   # >= 16 chars; enables the login gate
MK_API_TOKEN="another-random-token"         # optional: bearer token for automation

With MK_AUTH_SECRET set, the browser shows a login screen (session stored in an HttpOnly + Secure + SameSite=Strict cookie that slides — you stay logged in for up to ~400 days of continued use) and scripts authenticate with Authorization: Bearer <MK_API_TOKEN>. See server/API.md.

Log out from the avatar (top-right) → Log out, which ends the session and returns to the login screen (DELETE /api/session under the hood). An expired session shows the login screen again automatically.

Hardening notes for a public deployment:

• The container image (MK_STATIC set) refuses to start without MK_AUTH_SECRET, so you can't accidentally expose an open server.
• Put it behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy (e.g. Traefik). Prefer expose: "8787" over a published ports: mapping so the proxy is the only ingress, and set MK_PROXY_DEPTH to the number of trusted proxy hops (default 1) so login rate-limiting reads the real client IP.
• The container runs as the non-root deno user. A fresh mk-data volume inherits the right ownership; an existing root-owned volume needs a one-time chown -R 1000:1000 (or recreate it) so the database stays writable.

Image tags (umagistr/mk): latest = newest release · YYYY.MM.DD.N = a specific CalVer release (e.g. 2026.06.22.1). Every push to main cuts a CalVer release via the Release (CalVer) workflow — no SHA-tagged images; each release builds the image and opens a matching GitHub release.

Two processes — the Vite dev server (frontend, proxies /api → the backend) and the Deno + SQLite API:

npm install
deno task server      # API on :8787  (writes ./mk.db)
npm run dev           # app on :5173

Scripts: npm run gate (typecheck + unit tests) · npm run build (production frontend → dist/) · npm run e2e (Playwright) · deno check server/main.ts.

src/            frontend (canvas, render, store, core reducer/ops, calendar, …)
src/core/       pure domain: state reducer, ops, due/done/archive logic (shared with the server)
server/         Deno + SQLite API + static file serving   (API.md = reference)
tests/          vitest unit tests        e2e/  Playwright scenarios

The browser store and the server run the same src/core reducer, so the app and the API can never disagree about what a change means.

Vite · TypeScript · hand-rolled CSS (OKLCH) · Deno · node:sqlite. No UI framework. Localhost-first; optional single-user auth (passphrase + API token) for public exposure.