Bantō is a minimal kanban board that runs entirely in your browser. No account, no server, no database. Open the page, start organizing, and everything saves itself automatically to local storage. That's it.

I had this idea sitting in my head for months. Most task management tools out there are either way too heavy — think Jira, Notion, Linear — or they require you to create an account and sync everything through the cloud. I just wanted a simple board for my homelab projects that does its job without getting in the way.

It started as a university project for a business software course, but honestly it was mostly an excuse to build something I actually wanted to use. The whole thing is zero dependencies: no npm, no bundler, no framework. Just HTML, CSS, and about 1,300 lines of vanilla JavaScript.

Keep it simple

There is a reason pen and paper still works so well — everyone knows exactly how it behaves. Software can surprise you in annoying ways, and those small moments of confusion add up. I heard someone put it really well in a podcast: most apps are packed with features and take forever to learn, when all you needed was a quick note on a piece of paper.

That idea stuck with me. I also read a book about Dieter Rams and the Braun design philosophy — the whole "less but better" approach. Bantō should feel as obvious and predictable as writing things down by hand. Click to edit, drag to move, done. No modal dialogs, no settings pages, no learning curve.

Why the name?

Bantō (番頭) is a Japanese word for a manager or head clerk — someone who keeps things in order quietly and reliably. It also nods to bento boxes and kanban boards: bento boxes are neat, tidy, and practical, and kanban is all about visible, simple flow. The name is meant to capture both: organized, lightweight, and calm.

What it can do

• Create, rename, reorder, and delete columns
• Add cards with a title and description — inline editing everywhere
• Drag and drop cards and columns freely
• Mark cards as complete
• Full undo and redo that persists across sessions
• Export and import your board as JSON
• Keyboard shortcuts for common actions
• Touch and mobile support with long-press drag
• Auto-save — there is no save button, it just works

Design

The board uses a warm, papery aesthetic — a beige parchment background with a subtle blue grid texture, cobalt blue accents, and cards with a flat geometric drop shadow. I wanted it to feel like a productive workspace, not a corporate dashboard.

Action buttons on cards stay hidden until you hover over them, keeping the board visually clean. On mobile, everything adapts: columns scroll horizontally, and buttons are always visible since there is no hover state. Small details, but they make a difference.

Self-hostable

Bantō is a static site — no build step, no server-side processing. You can drop it on any web server, or run it with a single docker-compose up. I run mine on my own hardware in a K3s cluster, served by Caddy with automatic HTTPS.

Try it

Bantō is live at banto.erik-schuetze.dev. Everything stays in your browser — no data ever leaves your machine. The source code is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub.