Kanban Worker Lanes — Division of Labor

Think of a busy kitchen: the head chef doesn’t cook every dish, they write orders on a whiteboard, and each station — grill, salad, plating — picks up what they need and marks it done. That’s exactly how Hermes Kanban works for AI agents.

What Is a Kanban Board?

It’s a shared task board for all your AI assistants. Every task lives in a single database file (~/.hermes/kanban.db), so any agent can view, claim, or update tasks at any time. Unlike asking one agent to “call” another (that’s delegate_task), the Kanban board survives crashes, timeouts, and bad luck — tasks don’t vanish just because one agent died mid-conversation.

Two Doors, One Board

You can use the board in two ways, but they always see the same data:

1. Agents use it via tools — they call kanban_show, kanban_create, kanban_complete, etc. No manual work from you; they just read and write the board.
2. You use it via the terminal — type hermes kanban or /kanban in chat to see and manage tasks yourself.

# View all tasks
hermes kanban list

# Create a new task
hermes kanban create "Write weekly report" --assignee weekly-reporter

# Mark a task done
hermes kanban complete 42

Why Not Just delegate_task?

Aspect	delegate_task	Kanban
Style	Like a phone call: wait for reply	Like email: drop it and move on
Failure	Task lost if agent crashes	Task stays; can retry or reassign
Human input	Not possible	Comment, block, or unlock anytime
Participants	One agent at a time	Multiple agents can work the same task

The key difference: Kanban is “fire-and-forget.” The task persists until someone marks it complete. Even if an agent crashes halfway, another can pick up the card and continue.

What Is Kanban Good For?

• Research teams: several agents gather data, one analyst synthesizes, one writer drafts the final piece
• Scheduled jobs: every morning, an agent generates a brief and appends it to a running log
• Engineering pipelines: break work into cards → parallel development → peer review → merge
• Batch management: one agent manages 50 social accounts, each with its own card

A Practical Tip for Beginners

Don’t over-engineer at first. Start with one simple scenario: create a task, let one agent complete it, and watch the status change from your terminal. Once that feels natural, try two agents — one collects information, the other writes the summary. Remember: the real power of Kanban is “tasks never get lost, and you can always check status,” not complex automation.

Summary: Kanban upgrades AI collaboration from “phone calls” to “whiteboard management” — more reliable, more flexible, and always open for human intervention. Next time you feel your AI agents are tripping over each other, give them a shared board.