What is Hermes Kanban?

Hermes Kanban is a chat-native project management pattern: a Hermes Agent on Telegram or Discord maintains a kanban board, moving cards based on conversational messages and summarizing standups with AI.

Does Hermes Kanban replace Trello or Jira?

For small teams that already live in chat, yes — it removes the separate-tool overhead. For larger orgs with cross-team workflows, Hermes Kanban is better as a layer on top of an existing tool rather than a full replacement.

How does the AI know which card to move?

The Hermes Agent parses chat messages with the help of the LLM and the kanban skill. Patterns like "done with X", "blocked on Y", or explicit "@bot move Z to review" all trigger card updates. Ambiguous messages get a quick reply asking for clarification.

Where is the kanban data stored?

In the Hermes memory store — local JSON or SQLite by default. If you self-host, data lives on your server. On OpenClaw Launch managed hosting, it lives in your container persistent volume.

← Use Cases

Use Case

Hermes Kanban

Most kanban tools (Trello, Jira, Linear) live in a tab you forget to open. Hermes Kanban flips the model: the board lives in your team's Telegram or Discord, the AI moves cards based on chat, and the project history is searchable by anyone who can type a question. Same kanban discipline, zero context-switching.

Why a Chat-Native Kanban?

Kanban boards are great for one thing: making in-flight work visible. The failure mode is the same everywhere — teams stop updating the board because it's a separate tool. The board falls behind, becomes wrong, and gets abandoned.

If the board lives in the same chat where the team already talks, updates happen naturally. “Done with auth” in #engineering moves the card. The AI keeps the board honest without anyone needing to remember to open Trello.

5 Ways Teams Use Hermes Kanban

Cards Move on Chat Messages

“Move the login bug to in-progress” — the bot updates the board. No tab-switching, no Trello, no Jira.

AI Standup Summaries

Every morning, the bot DMs each teammate a one-line summary of their cards and asks what they're blocked on. Replies become the standup transcript.

Persistent Memory of Every Move

Hermes's long-term memory store remembers every card movement, comment, and decision. Ask “why did we deprioritize X last sprint?” and get the actual answer.

Cross-Channel Notifications

Card stuck in review for 48 hours? The bot pings the assignee in DM. Card overdue? It posts in the team channel.

Sprint Retrospectives

The AI reads the whole sprint's chat + card history and drafts a retro with what shipped, what slipped, and what to try next sprint.

How It Works

A Hermes Agent on Telegram or Discord, with a kanban skill that maintains the board state. The skill stores cards as a structured doc in Hermes's memory, and the agent calls tools to move them when chat messages match patterns like “done”, “blocked on X”, or “moving Y to review”.

Cards have the usual fields — title, status, assignee, due date, labels — plus a chat-source pointer so you can click back to the original message. The full board renders as a Markdown table in the bot's web UI for the rare times someone wants the visual grid.

Real Example

A 4-person startup running Hermes Kanban in their #standup Discord channel. Sprint planning happens in chat: “next sprint we need auth, billing, and the Stripe webhook fix.” The bot creates three cards.

During the sprint, status updates are casual: “auth done, billing in review, pushing Stripe to next sprint.” The bot moves the cards. At sprint end, it drafts the retro from chat + card history and posts it for everyone to edit.

Total tool overhead: zero. The team never opens Trello, Jira, or Linear. The board stays accurate because updates are conversational, not bureaucratic.

How It Compares

vs Trello / Jira: No separate UI to remember to update. AI fills in the discipline gap when humans forget. Free if you self-host.

vs ClickUp / Linear: Less polished UI, but lives in chat where work already happens. Better for small teams; not a replacement for full PM platforms.

vs notebooks / shared docs: Real state machine for card status, real memory of changes, real automation. Docs are passive; Hermes Kanban is proactive.

How to Set It Up

Deploy a Hermes Agent on OpenClaw Launch from $3/mo, or self-host following the install guide.
Connect Telegram or Discord — bot token in config, channel in the chat. See the Telegram and Discord guides.
Add a kanban skill — either install a community skill or write a small Hermes skill that stores cards as JSON in the memory store. The pattern is simple enough that “build a kanban skill” is a 30-minute first project.
Train your team's chat habits — for the first sprint, explicitly mention the bot (“@bot move login to done”). After a week or two, the team adapts to natural-language updates.

What Plan Do You Need?

The Lite plan ($3/mo first month, $6/mo after) handles a small-team kanban setup comfortably. Upgrade to Pro ($20/mo) if you run multiple project boards, need higher throughput, or want a beefier model (Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Gemini Flash).

See full pricing.