Most kanban tools were built for project managers, then grudgingly opened up to the people doing the work. Todo4you is the other way around: it was built by a developer, for developers, and every feature is measured against one question - does this save me from tabbing away from my editor?
This post is a tour of what Todo4you looks like when a developer, or a small dev team, sits down to actually use it. No sales pitch, just the shortcuts, the integrations, and the escape hatches that matter when your day is split between code and tickets.
A board that speaks your workflow
The visible part of Todo4you is a kanban board, but the columns are not the usual To do / Doing / Done straitjacket. Every project defines its own statuses under Settings -> Statuses. You pick the slug, the label, and the category (backlog, todo, active, review, done) - and the category is what the rest of the system keys off. That means you can rename In progress to Hacking, add a Blocked column between Review and Done, or split Review into Code review and QA, without breaking automations or reports.
The board ships with all the things you expect and a few you do not:
- Drag and drop between columns with live updates, so a teammate moving a card shows up on your screen without a refresh.
- Hide or minimize columns per user. Your collapsed-column choice is yours, it does not affect anyone else's layout.
- List view and calendar view for the same data, because sometimes a board is not the right shape.
Every ticket carries the fields a developer actually needs: a reference like PRJ-42, a markdown description, a checklist, blockers, tags, assignees, priority, deadline, time estimate, attachments, and a comment thread.
Git integrations that actually close the loop
Todo4you talks to GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, and Bitbucket over webhooks. Set up the integration once per project, paste your ticket reference somewhere in a commit, branch, or PR, and the board takes care of the rest.
What the integration picks up:
- Commits - reference
PRJ-42or#42in the commit message and it appears in the ticket's Git activity section with a link to the commit. - Branches - push a branch named
feat/PRJ-42-add-ssoand it is linked automatically. - Pull requests - PR title, description, or branch name is scanned. Opened, closed, merged, and reviewed events all land on the ticket.
- Auto-move rules - configure them per project, in plain English: "on first commit, move to In progress", "on PR opened, move to Review", "on PR merged, move to Done".
The auto-move runs through the same pipeline as a manual move, so your Flows, events, and automations fire exactly as if a human had dragged the card. You write code, Todo4you narrates.
A real REST API, not an afterthought
Everything the web UI does is available under /api/v1/*. Create a personal token under Profile -> API tokens, send it as Authorization: Bearer <token>, and you are in.
The full reference with request and response examples lives at https://www.todo4you.com/developers. There is a Postman collection linked from the same page, so you can be poking at your board from curl inside a minute.
Chat with your board: the MCP server
If you spend half your day inside Claude, Cursor, Zed, or another MCP-aware assistant, there is a hosted Model Context Protocol server you can point it at. You do not need to copy ticket numbers back and forth - your assistant reads and writes tickets directly.
Generate an MCP token under Profile -> MCP tokens (separate from your API tokens, separately scoped), plug it into your client's config, and ask things like:
- "What is still open in PRJ this sprint? Group by assignee."
- "Create a ticket in PRJ: title 'OAuth callback fails on Safari iOS', describe what I just told you, tag it
iosandbug, assign it to me." - "Move PRJ-42 to Review and leave a comment linking PR #218."
The MCP server is read-only by default. You explicitly opt a token into write access when you generate it, and you can scope it to a single project if you do not want the assistant touching everything else.
Flows: conditional automations in English
Past a certain team size, there is always repetitive ticket plumbing: when a ticket tagged security is created, assign it to me and set priority to High; when a ticket moves to Done, add a checklist item Write release notes entry to the next sprint ticket; when the deadline is less than two days away and the ticket is still in Backlog, bump priority to High and drop a comment.
Flows live under Project settings -> Flows and read like a sentence: When X happens, if Y conditions match, then do Z. Triggers cover ticket created, moved, updated, deleted, assignee changes, comments, and checklist toggles. Conditions combine with ALL, ANY, and NOT. Actions include move, assign, tag, set priority or deadline, add a comment, and add checklist items. You can reference the trigger with tokens like {{ticket.ref}} and {{actor.name}}.
Webhooks going out
It goes both ways. Subscribe to outgoing webhooks under Project settings -> Webhooks and Todo4you will POST signed payloads to any URL you pick. The same events that power Pusher are available: ticket.created, ticket.moved, ticket.updated, comment.added, timer.started, timer.stopped, and more. Pair this with your own systems and combine the power.
Time tracking that does not pretend to be a separate app
Every ticket has a timer button. Click it, the timer runs in the background, and the breadcrumb bar shows a pill with the current duration so you always know what you are tracking. Switch tickets and it pauses cleanly. Prefer logging by hand after the fact? That is also possible.
All entries roll up into project reports: time by assignee, by tag, by status category, and by day of week. Export to CSV when the accountant asks.
Tags, checklists, blockers, and the boring stuff done well
- Tags are per project and colored, and you can filter any view by any combination.
- Checklists inside a ticket can be toggled inline from the board card, no modal needed.
- Blockers are first-class: mark ticket A as blocked by ticket B and A shows up with a red stripe until B hits a
donecategory. - Attachments go on both tickets and comments. Images render inline. Annotation on images is built in.
- Dark mode is not a retrofit. Every view has been tuned in both themes.
The escape hatch
And if you do ever want to leave - because that is the question you actually want answered before you start something new - there is a full export: every ticket, comment, attachment, time entry, and flow, as JSON, from Project settings -> Export. Your data is yours. The stuff you build on top of Todo4you is yours too.
Try it on your own project
Sign up at todo4you.com and spin up a project. Or, if you are migrating away from another online tool, there is a step-by-step guide in the project settings. Questions, feature requests, bug reports - info@todo4you.com lands in my inbox.