Files
lanework/DESIGN
rzen b0c134a896 A board leaves as one file and comes back as one — headings are lanes, rows are cards, position is the order
File ▸ Export ▸ writes the frontmost board as Obsidian Kanban Markdown, a
plain Markdown outline, or RFC 4180 CSV; File ▸ Import Board… reads any of
the three back into a fresh board, format detected rather than asked. Every
format encodes order as document position, so an export writes no ranks and
an import mints them in parse order on the ordinary create path. Lossy
exports post a warning-tone loss row naming the comments and attachments the
destination cannot carry. Convert-once: nothing watches, nothing merges.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014PtZdPwqZuqEDLc6wZMtEy
2026-08-09 08:38:06 -04:00
..
2026-07-26 14:58:16 -04:00

Lanework — Design Documents

A ground-up rewrite of the Kanban app, to ship as Lanework on the Mac App Store. The old repo (../../Kanban, one level above this repository — not the rewrite's own Kanban/ source folder, which shares the codename) was a pathfinder — it never shipped, but it is the reference implementation and the source of hard-won decisions. This design starts from a clean slate and keeps only what earned its place. The rewrite keeps the internal codename Kanban (bundle id dev.rzen.indie.Kanban).

Each document covers one aspect of the design. Within each:

  • Decisions — settled, either carried over from the old app or newly made.
  • Changes from Kanban — where this rewrite deliberately diverges.
  • Open questions — flagged for iteration; nothing here is implicitly settled.

Index

Doc Aspect
00-vision.md What Lanework is, who it's for, goals and non-goals
01-storage-format.md On-disk contract: folders, frontmatter, ordering, the materialized trash
02-architecture.md App structure: source of truth, stores, watchers, concurrency
03-board-ui.md Board window: layout, lanes, cards, styling, templates
04-interactions.md Selection, drag & drop, keyboard, clipboard, search
05-card-window.md The card window: Markdown preview/edit, attachments
06-history-undo.md Git-backed undo/redo and history — retired 2026-08-08 (git excised, strategy/01-git-excision.md; Undo routing migrated to 13)
07-sync-collab.md Board modes and git-rails sync — retired 2026-08-08 as written; successor: the ops-based sync service workstream
08-agent-integration.md AI agents as first-class users of the board
09-templates.md Board templates: inventory and definition format
10-accessibility.md VoiceOver, text scaling, visual accommodations
11-command-nexus.md The command Nexus — every command and action: bindings, contexts, customizability
12-editions.md The tiers — mooted 2026-08-08: one version, everything free, tier machinery excised; Pro returns with the iPhone/sync era as a fresh pass (the doc is record: entitlement mechanics, distribution, the git rows)
13-native-undo.md macOS-native undo/redo — the history substrate (sole since 2026-08-08); owns Undo routing
14-git-operations.md Extracted pathfinder git-operations conclusions — retired 2026-08-08 (superseded record)

Deferred design iterations

The card window (05-card-window.md), toolbar (03-board-ui.md ▸ Toolbar), styling controls (03-board-ui.md ▸ Styling ▸ Controls), and comments (01 ▸ Enhanced schema + 05 ▸ The comments column — designed 2026-07-29, shipping post-2.0) each had their focused pass and are settled.

The authoritative list of open design passes is the findings board (Lanework Redesign.kanban ▸ Issues to Resolve) — this section stopped enumerating by hand after drifting twice. Standing examples as of 2026-07-29: the attachment-undo staging design and the EchoLedger foreign-undo bridge (both flagged in 13-native-undo.md), Teams' tracker integration (no design yet), the fail-fast decision surface (01 ▸ Refuse), and the drop-release settle presentation (03 ▸ Motion — deliberately last in line).

Wishlist

Ideas worth keeping but outside the committed design live in ../WISHLIST.md.

Terminology

The rewrite adopts lane as the canonical term for what the old app called a column (it's in the name: Lane-work). "Column" survives only when referring to the old app or to interior card-grid columns inside a wide lane.