Proposal: local task server

A task tracker that runs on the developer’s machine, so Task Board and agents keep working offline and without a Jira or GitHub account.

Proposal, not built. Only a minimal local task list exists today; see “What exists today”.

Proposal

  • A small daemon backed by SQLite. The original spec put the database at ~/.config/robos/tasks.db.
  • Projects, epics, tasks and subtasks, with a Kanban status, priority, estimate, labels and comments.
  • A “Local Task Server” entry in Task Servers with start, stop and reset controls.
  • A LocalTaskServerAdapter in packages/robos-task-client so Task Board and Dev Central treat it like Jira or GitHub.
  • Task tools for agents through task-manager-mcp.
  • Optional export of tasks to YAML under .robos/tasks/.

The spec asked for permissively licensed dependencies (MIT or Apache-2.0) only.

What exists today

  • createAdapter in packages/robos-task-client/index.js supports two server types, jira and github. Any other type throws “Unsupported task server type”.
  • The Task Servers app lists Gitea, Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear and Azure DevOps in its add menu, but only Jira and GitHub have their own forms (packages/task-servers/renderer/app.js).
  • Task Manager MCP already keeps a local task list in ~/.config/robos/tasks/tasks.json and exposes robos_tasks_list, robos_tasks_get, robos_tasks_create, robos_tasks_update, robos_tasks_advance_workflow, robos_tasks_add_comment and robos_tasks_log_hours. It is not a Task Servers provider and nothing in packages/task-board or packages/dev-central reads it.

Source

Raw note: ideas/inbox/local-open-source-task-server.txt. The earlier long spec is in the git history of this file.