precursor-kanban

A GitHub Projects v2 kanban board for Precursor — and the reference implementation of a Precursor plugin.

What it adds

One package, three contributions:

• A section — sidebar entry, home card, command-palette entry and a /kanban route, with columns derived from each project's Status single-select field, drag-and-drop card moves (updateProjectV2ItemFieldValue), and a card preview showing the issue body, labels and comments plus a jump to the linked Precursor topic. The UI is a built ES module shipped inside this wheel, loaded by the app at runtime.

• MCP tools — a kanban.board server (list_boards, get_board, board_summary) so the assistant can read your boards mid-conversation.

• API routes — /api/github/projects, backing the board.

Remove the package and all three disappear; core keeps no knowledge of them.

Related MCP server: GitHub Projects MCP Server

Install

uv pip install precursor-kanban          # into an existing Precursor install
uv tool install "precursor-ai[kanban]"   # or alongside the app

…or from Settings → Plugins inside the app, which also offers the restart.

Precursor discovers it at startup through the precursor.plugins entry-point group; no configuration is needed.

Compatibility

The plugin targets two versioned contracts — precursor.plugin_api on the Python side and @precursor/host on the frontend side. They move independently of each other and of the host's own version. Its MCP server also runs in the host's environment, so the plugin and the host must agree on one MCP SDK major.

Requires a Precursor newer than 2026.7.0. precursor.plugin_api — the entire surface this package compiles against — landed on Precursor's main after that release, so 2026.7.0 cannot load this plugin at all. Use a host built from main, or the next release.

From 2026.9.1 on, requires a Precursor on MCP 2 (lrivallain/precursor#345). On a host still running MCP 1, the board works but the kanban.board MCP server can't start.

From 2026.9.2 on, the browser tab names the open board, but only on a Precursor whose section host has setPageTitle (lrivallain/precursor#358). It is on Precursor's main and in the nightly, but not in any release yet, including 2026.9.0. It is additive, so on an older host everything works and the tab keeps its old title.

Requirements

• Issue associations enabled in Settings → GitHub — the master switch for the whole GitHub surface; the board's endpoints answer 403 without it.

• A GitHub repository is optional. When set it contributes its owner's boards, which is all it is ever read for; otherwise add projects from the board's +.

• A token carrying the project scope (a superset of read:project), which the repo scope does not imply:

  gh auth refresh -h github.com -s project

  Without it the board returns a 403 explaining exactly this.

Layout

See Precursor's plugin documentation for the full contract.

Development

make sync     # uv sync + npm ci + build the frontend bundle
make check    # every gate CI runs
make test     # the test suite alone
make build    # rebuild the frontend into the Python package

Running it

A plugin has nothing to run on its own. The section, the routes and the MCP server only exist inside a host that discovered them through the precursor.plugins entry point, so seeing the board means running a Precursor with this working tree installed into it:

make dev-host   # provision a host beside this checkout, plugin installed into it
make dev        # run its dev stack — Vite HMR + uvicorn --reload

scripts/dev-host.sh clones the host's main into .precursor-host/ (gitignored, disposable), syncs its environment, and installs this repository into it editable — so Python changes need only a restart and frontend changes only make build. make dev runs with --port 0, meaning the OS picks a free port and several checkouts can serve their own board at once; the URL is in the startup banner. Override the host with PRECURSOR_HOST_REPO, PRECURSOR_HOST_REF, PRECURSOR_HOST_DIR or PRECURSOR_HOST_EXTRAS.

The host from uv sync is deliberately not what this runs. That one is resolved from git as a wheel built without its npm step, so it has the backend and no SPA — enough for the test suite to boot an app, nothing to look at.

On a device that routes packages through a mirror, uv sync --frozen cannot work here: it downloads the files.pythonhosted.org URLs recorded in uv.lock, which such devices block, and --index cannot redirect a URL the lockfile already pinned. The script falls back to uv export + uv pip install, which keeps the locked versions and their hashes but lets the configured index serve them; npm ci falls back to npm install --no-package-lock for the same reason. Neither lockfile is ever written — CI owns both. If the mirror is behind on a pinned version the plugin's own environment may still fail; the host is set up first, so make dev works regardless and only make test has to wait.

In the GitHub Copilot app both steps are already wired up in .github/github-app.yml: Setup env runs on session create, and Dev Server is one click away. Accept the configuration when the app offers it.

Four things are worth knowing before changing anything.

The frontend is a build product. src/precursor_kanban/web/ is generated and gitignored. Without it the backend still advertises the section, the app has nothing to import, and the section silently doesn't appear — so make sync and make check both build it for you.

The bundle borrows the host's React. react, react-dom, both JSX runtimes and @precursor/host are marked external; an import map injected by Precursor resolves them to its own runtime. That is what keeps a single React on the page. Bundling our own would give the app two dispatchers and every hook here would throw — so CI asserts the built bundle still imports them rather than containing them.

The bundle ships its own Tailwind utilities. Inside the Precursor monorepo this was free: the host's Tailwind build scanned these sources and its stylesheet already carried every class they used. Out of tree it cannot — the sources ship compiled — so web/src/styles.css builds the utilities this plugin needs and styles.ts injects them. They resolve against the host's theme variables, so the board stays themed with the app and follows dark mode with it.

Lockfiles are generated by CI, never locally — a corporate mirror rewrites artifact URLs and downgrades their hashes. Run make hooks once to have that blocked at commit time.

More detail, including how the test suite pins the host and how to keep the SDK declaration honest, is in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Licence

MIT, same as Precursor.