Daedalus

A lightweight, offline-first kanban board desktop app.

Boards are plain directories of markdown files - no databases, no cloud, no accounts.

Built as a fast, personal replacement for Trello that plays nicely with Obsidian and other markdown tools.

See more screenshots in docs/screenshots/

Why

• Trello was using 1-3 GB of RAM for a large single board. Dragging cards would lag or fail entirely on this board
• Obsidian's Kanban plugin didn't do what I needed without a pile of community plugins and needless complexity
• I wanted my data as plain files - editable in any text editor, easy to back up, easy for AI agents to read

Daedalus uses ~60 MB of RAM and loads boards in under 100ms. Note: This depends on board size, but for reference I went from 1-3GB RAM on Trello to ~200MB RAM loading the same board in Daedalus.

Features

• Markdown cards with YAML frontmatter - edit in Daedalus, Obsidian, vim, or any text editor
• File watcher - auto-reloads when cards are edited externally
• Drag and drop - cards between lists, list column reordering
• Rich card fields - labels, icons, due dates, date ranges, checklists, counters, time series, estimates, URLs
• Card templates - predefined structures with preset fields, labels, and checklists
• Search and filter - full-text search with #label, icon:, and url: filter prefixes
• Wiki-style linking - [[card-id]] links between cards
• Keyboard navigation - arrow keys, shortcuts for common actions, ? for help
• Custom icons - upload SVG/PNG icons for cards and lists
• Board scratchpad - persistent markdown notepad alongside the board
• Multiple boards - switch between boards, set a default, recent board history
• Export - JSON and ZIP formats
• Zoom and view modes - zoom in/out, minimal card view
• Board statistics - card counts by label, list, and other breakdowns
• CLI tool - daedalus-cli for scripting and automation

Stack

• Backend: Go 1.23 with Wails v2
• Frontend: Svelte 5 with TypeScript and SCSS
• Data: Directories = lists, .md files = cards, board.yaml = config

Board Format

A board is a directory with this structure:

my-board/
  board.yaml              # Board config (list order, labels, templates, preferences)
  scratchpad.md           # Optional board-level notes
  _assets/icons/          # Custom SVG/PNG icons
  backlog/                # Each directory is a list
    1.md                  # Each .md file is a card
    2.md
  in-progress/
    3.md
  done/
    4.md

Card Format

Cards are markdown files with YAML frontmatter:

---
id: 42
title: Implement OAuth2
list_order: 1
created: 2026-02-05T09:00:00-05:00
updated: 2026-02-18T14:20:00-05:00
due: 2026-02-25T17:00:00-05:00
labels:
    - Feature
    - Backend
icon: shield.svg
url: https://github.com/org/repo/pull/142
estimate: 8
counter:
    current: 4
    max: 7
    step: 1
    label: Endpoints
checklist:
    label: Implementation Steps
    items:
        - desc: "Set up provider config"
          done: true
          idx: 0
        - desc: "Write integration tests"
          done: false
          idx: 1
timeseries:
    label: Build Time (sec)
    entries:
        - t: "2026-01-06"
          v: 142
        - t: "2026-01-13"
          v: 128
range:
    start: 2026-02-14T09:00:00-05:00
    end: 2026-02-28T17:00:00-05:00
---
# Implement OAuth2

Card body in markdown...

All frontmatter fields except id, title, and list_order are optional. Unknown YAML keys are preserved through round-trips, so cards edited by other tools won't lose data.

Trello Fields

If a card was migrated from Trello export JSON, some Trello fields are maintained in the YAML frontmatter. See Trello migration section below.

trello_data:
  id: xxx
  url: https://trello.com/c/BOARD_ID/CARD_ID-card-title
  date_closed: None
  date_last_activity: 2026-01-23T17:09:26.602Z
  date_completed: None

Custom Icons

Daedalus doesn't ship with icons to stay small. Upload your own SVG or PNG files through the icon manager, or drop them into _assets/icons/.

Good sources: Lucide, Simple Icons, or any site's favicon.

# Convert .ico to .png if needed
python3 -c "from PIL import Image; Image.open('favicon.ico').save('favicon.png')"

CLI

daedalus-cli provides scriptable access to boards:

daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board board                       # get board summary
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board lists                       # get all lists
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board cards todo                  # get cards in a list
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board card-get 42                 # get full card details by ID
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board card-create todo "New task" # create a task
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board card-delete 42              # delete a card by ID
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board list-create backlog         # create a list
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board list-delete backlog         # delete a list by name
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board export-json out.json        # export board as JSON
daedalus-cli --board ~/boards/my-board export-zip out.zip          # export board as zip

All output is JSON for easy piping to jq or other tools.

Trello Migration

Export your Trello board as JSON, then convert:

python3 scripts/trello_to_md.py --input trello_export.json --output ~/boards/my-board

This creates list directories and card markdown files with frontmatter metadata from the Trello export.

Limitations

• Only tested on Linux, but should mostly work on Windows/Mac if I didn't miss any cross-platform problems.
• daedalus-cli not fully tested. This was a nice to have for automation, but I don't really use it in my workflow yet.

Development

Dependencies (Arch Linux)

sudo pacman -Syu --needed base-devel gtk3 webkit2gtk svt-av1 libavif npm go
go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest
wails doctor  # verify all dependencies

Commands

wails dev              # Development server with hot reload
wails build            # Production build
go test ./...          # Run Go tests
cd frontend && npx svelte-check  # TypeScript/Svelte type checking

Debug Logging

DAEDALUS_DEBUG=1 wails dev

Future Features

Features that I originally thought up, but I need to think about it more.

• Card dependencies. ex: Card B is blocked by Card A
• Dependency graph view
• Recurring tasks. ex: Card created and due every Tuesday at 12:00 PM. Maybe not cards, but like a daily checklist thing?
• Habit tracking - Track something over a date range or limitless. Check off daily or configurable interval?
• Epics (multiple cards) and Sagas (multiple epics) - useful for trying to track giant goals
• Calendar view - display cards, recurring tasks, etc.
• MCP server - give easy access to AI agents. I'm not there yet in my workflow, but should be relatively easy since it could probably use the same functions as the CLI