Kanban Markdown Manage kanban board features stored as markdown files with YAML frontmatter. Each feature is a .md file; the VS Code kanban-markdown extension renders them as a board. File Format Every feature file follows this exact format:

id : "my-feature-2026-02-20" status : "backlog" priority : "medium" assignee : null dueDate : null created : "2026-02-20T10:00:00.000Z" modified : "2026-02-20T10:00:00.000Z" completedAt : null labels : [ ] order : "a0"

My Feature Description and details here. Serialization rules (must match exactly for the extension to parse correctly): String fields: always "double-quoted" Nullable fields ( assignee , dueDate , completedAt ): bare null when unset Labels: inline array ["bug", "ui"] or [] Order: "double-quoted" string — fractional index for lexicographic sorting (see below) Field order: id , status , priority , assignee , dueDate , created , modified , completedAt , labels , order Valid values: status: backlog | todo | in-progress | review | done priority: critical | high | medium | low For full field specs, see references/data-model.md . Features Directory Default: .devtool/features/ relative to workspace root. Configurable via VS Code setting kanban-markdown.featuresDirectory . Active features (backlog, todo, in-progress, review): {featuresDir}/{id}.md Completed features (done): {featuresDir}/done/{id}.md Fractional Index Ordering The order field uses fractional indexing — lexicographically sortable strings that allow inserting between any two items without reindexing. The extension uses the fractional-indexing npm package internally. When creating features , determine the order by reading existing features in the target column (sorted by order ): If the column is empty: use "a0" To append after the last item: increment the trailing character — "a0" → "a1" , "a1" → "a2" , ..., "a9" → "aA" , etc. The full character sequence is 0-9 , A-Z , a-z (base-62, ASCII order) When moving features via drag-and-drop, the extension computes fractional keys between neighbors automatically. The skill only needs to handle appending new features to the end of a column. Creating Features Generate ID: lowercase title, keep only a-z 0-9 - space , replace spaces with - , collapse multiple - , trim - from ends, truncate to 50 chars, append -YYYY-MM-DD . If empty, use feature-YYYY-MM-DD . Set created and modified to current ISO timestamp. Set order by reading existing features in the target column and generating a key that sorts after the last one (see Fractional Index Ordering above). If status is done , set completedAt to now and place in done/ subfolder. Write frontmatter in exact field order above, then

Title

and body.

Updating Features

Always update

modified

to current ISO timestamp

Never change

id

or

created

Preserve exact serialization format

Moving Features

Update

status

and

modified

. When crossing the done boundary:

To done

set

completedAt

to current ISO timestamp, move file to

done/

subfolder

From done

set completedAt to null , move file back to root Writing Content Start with

Title

(the extension extracts the display title from the first

heading

). Use acceptance criteria checklists, notes, etc. as needed.