Supported Kanban Providers

Operator! is itself a kanban board, available by default.

Issues are defined as markdown tickets on the Operator board, launching tickets with delegated agents allows the work to be done according to the workflows and standards you define.

Available Integrations

Statuses follow the feature maturity scale.

Provider	Status	Notes
Operator	GA	Built in; the `.tickets/` markdown is the board
Jira Cloud	Beta	Full API integration
Linear	Beta	Full API integration
GitHub Projects	Beta	Projects v2 GraphQL integration
OpenSpec	Alpha	Local spec-driven changes; pull-only

How It Works

The Operator board always exists. Connecting an external provider adds a sync loop on top of it:

Pull: Fetches issues from configured boards/projects
Queue: Writes them as tickets on the Operator board, ordered by type then FIFO
Assign: Dispatches tickets to available agents
Update: Pushes column changes back to the originating provider

The Operator board is only ever the destination of a sync, never a source.

The Ticket Lifecycle

Whether tickets come from a provider or from .tickets/, Operator moves them through the same three directories:

.tickets/queue/       -> Work waiting to be picked up
.tickets/in-progress/ -> Currently being worked on
.tickets/completed/   -> Finished work

Queue. New tickets land in .tickets/queue/ and are ordered by their issue type’s position in the active collection, then FIFO by timestamp within the same type. The ordering is a property of the collection, not a hard-coded table - see Workflows.

Assignment. When an agent slot frees up, Operator selects the next ticket, prompts for launch confirmation, and moves it to in-progress/.

In progress. Agent status is tracked, progress notifications are sent, and Operator watches for completion or for the agent awaiting input.

Completion. The ticket moves to completed/, a notification is sent, and the slot is freed for the next ticket.

Parallelism Rules

Operator bounds concurrent work so agents do not collide:

Max agents = min(configured_max, cpu_cores - reserved_cores)
Autonomous agents can run in parallel across different projects
Paired agents run one at a time - they need your attention
Same project is sequential, to avoid conflicting edits

Whether an issue type is autonomous or paired is declared by its mode. See Supported Coding Agents for what each mode means in practice.

Column Mapping (todo / doing / done)

Operator is strict about its three internal states - todo, doing, done - because they represent the work actually inflight at operator’s level. External boards have flexible columns, so each synced project declares a status_mapping linking the two:

[kanban.<provider>."<workspace>".projects.<KEY>.status_mapping]
todo = "To Do"          # pulled into the queue; requeue pushes back here
doing = "In Progress"   # pushed when a ticket is launched/claimed
done = "Done"           # pushed when a ticket completes

With bidirectional = true, a synced ticket moves on the external board as operator works it: launch → doing, complete → done, return-to-queue → todo. The board’s real column names are discoverable via the /api/v1/kanban/statuses endpoints, and the VS Code config panel offers them as dropdowns. See the per-provider guides for details.

Choosing a Provider

Operator: The default. Best when the work starts here - no setup, no credentials, tickets versioned alongside your code. Start here and add an external provider only when work has to be visible to people outside Operator.
Jira Cloud: Best for teams already using Atlassian products, with rich workflow customization
Linear: Best for teams wanting a modern, fast issue tracker with streamlined workflows
GitHub Projects: Best when your work already lives in GitHub issues and Projects v2 boards
OpenSpec: Best for local, spec-driven change tracking without an external tracker (pull-only)

The Operator Board

Tickets in .tickets/ are not a fallback for projects without an issue tracker - they are the board every provider syncs into. See Operator for how to work it, and Tickets for the ticket format.