trello-tasker

A full-screen terminal UI for Trello, built with Ink. Pull every card from every board into one place, focus on what's due today, and comment / edit / move / create cards without leaving the keyboard.

╭─ trello-tasker · You ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ VIEWS                  │ Today's Focus (3)                                   │
│ · ★ Today (#today)   3 │ ❯ ◉ Fix login bug        ▪▪  Work    Doing  ◷ May28 │
│   ◉ Assigned to me   5 │   ◉ Review PR #42         ▪   Work    Todo   ◷ 14:00 │
│   ≡ All cards          │ ─ description ───────────────────────────────────── │
│ BOARDS                 │   The login flow breaks when the session cookie …   │
│ · All boards           │ ─ comments ───────────────────────────────────────  │
│   Work               4 │   @you  looking into this now                       │
╰────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
 focus · all boards   [tab] pane  [j/k] move  [t] focus  [c] comment  [q] quit

Features

• One view of everything — all boards, lists, cards, and members are pulled locally, then filtered client-side (no per-action round-trips for navigation).
• Custom views — Today's Focus (label-driven), Assigned to me, and All cards.
• See what others are doing — filter by any member.
• Grouped, collapsible views — a single board groups cards by list; the All cards view groups across boards as board → list. Cards keep their Trello priority order (pos); boards and lists are collapsible (z / Z) and the collapsed state is remembered across restarts. (Focus / Mine across boards stay a flat list sorted by due date.)
• Edit in place — toggle the focus label, mark a card done (d, per-board Done list), assign board members, manage checklists, add comments, edit descriptions (multi-line editor), move and reorder cards, and create cards.
• Point and click — click a view, board, or card to select it (mouse on by default; --no-mouse to keep native text selection).
• Always fresh — the dashboard re-syncs with Trello in the background (every 30 s by default), so changes made on trello.com, on mobile, or by teammates show up on their own. r still forces an immediate reload.
• MCP server — trello-tasker mcp serves the full Trello toolset over stdio, so AI agents (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, …) can read and write your boards. See MCP server.
• Themes — six built-in color themes (default, dracula, nord, gruvbox, solarized, mono), switchable live with T.

Install

Requires Node.js ≥ 18.

# from a clone of this repo
npm install
npm run build
npm install -g .        # installs the `trello-tasker` binary globally

Or run without installing globally:

npm run build && node dist/cli.js

To put it on another machine, either publish to npm (see below) or copy a tarball:

npm pack                # produces trello-tasker-x.y.z.tgz
# on the other machine:
npm install -g ./trello-tasker-x.y.z.tgz

Authenticate

trello-tasker login

It walks you through two steps:

1. Create a Power-Up at https://trello.com/power-ups/admin and copy its API key.
2. Open the authorization URL it prints, click Allow, and paste the token.

Credentials are stored at ~/.config/trello-tasker/config.json (mode 600). You can also supply them via the TRELLO_API_KEY / TRELLO_TOKEN environment variables. Repeat login on each computer.

Usage

trello-tasker                      # launch the dashboard
trello-tasker --board Work         # open focused on a board
trello-tasker config --focus-label priority   # change the focus label
trello-tasker config --refresh 60  # background-sync every 60 s (0 = off)
trello-tasker whoami               # show the authenticated user
trello-tasker mcp                  # serve the Trello tools over MCP/stdio
trello-tasker logout               # remove stored credentials

Keys

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | tab / shift+tab | move between panes (views · boards · cards) | | j / k or ↓ / ↑ | move selection | | click | select a view, board, or card; click a list/board header to collapse or expand it | | 1 / 2 / 3 | Today / Assigned to me / All cards | | f | filter by member | | t | toggle the focus label on the selected card | | d | move the card to its board's Done list (see below) | | D | set which list is the Done list for the board | | a | assign / unassign board members | | l | view / edit checklists (toggle items, add items, new list, delete) | | c | add a comment | | e | edit the description (multi-line; Ctrl+D save, Esc cancel) | | m | move the card to another list (also clears the focus label) | | J / K | reorder the card down / up within its list (board view) | | n | create a new card (tab to add a description, Ctrl+D to save) | | z / Z | collapse/expand the selected list / all lists | | T | change color theme (live preview) | | r | refresh from Trello | | ? | help · q quit |

Marking cards done

Each board can have a designated Done list. Press d on a card to move it there in one keystroke (this also clears the focus label, so it drops out of Today's Focus). The first time you press d on a board, you're prompted to choose which list is "Done"; the choice is remembered per board. Press D any time to change it. The Done list is flagged with a ✓done marker in the card view.

Mouse

Clicking is on by default — click a view or board in the sidebar, or a card in the list, to select it. If you'd rather keep your terminal's native text selection (mouse reporting intercepts it), disable it with --no-mouse or trello-tasker config --no-mouse.

Clicking needs a terminal that supports xterm mouse reporting. Most do — iTerm2, Terminal.app, VS Code, Alacritty, kitty, WezTerm, and Windows Terminal (PowerShell or WSL). The one place it won't work is the legacy Windows console (the old standalone conhost window); use Windows Terminal there. Either way, every action also has a key binding, so the keyboard works everywhere.

Configuration

~/.config/trello-tasker/config.json:

| Field | Meaning | Default | |-------|---------|---------| | apiKey, token | Trello credentials | — | | focusLabel | label name that drives Today's Focus | today | | defaultBoardId | board to open on first | — | | proxy | HTTP(S) proxy URL for hosts without direct egress | — | | theme | color theme: default, dracula, nord, gruvbox, solarized, mono | default | | refreshSeconds | background sync interval in seconds (0 disables) | 30 | | doneLists | per-board Done list ({ "<boardId>": "<listId>" }); set in-app with D | — | | mouse | enable mouse clicks (--no-mouse to disable) | true |

Press T in the app to switch themes with live preview, or set one with trello-tasker config --theme dracula.

Behind a proxy

On a host with no direct internet egress (e.g. a corporate VPC), point it at your proxy — Node's fetch ignores HTTP(S)_PROXY on its own, so set it explicitly:

export HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.corp:8080      # honored automatically, or…
trello-tasker config --proxy http://proxy.corp:8080   # persist it in config

If the proxy intercepts TLS with a private CA, also export NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS=/path/to/corp-ca.pem.

Collapsed-list state lives separately in ~/.config/trello-tasker/state.json. Config paths can be overridden with TRELLO_TASKER_CONFIG and TRELLO_TASKER_STATE.

MCP server

trello-tasker mcp speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio and exposes the full Trello surface the TUI uses — 26 tools covering boards, lists, cards, members, labels, comments, and checklists:

| Kind | Tools | |------|-------| | Read | whoami, list_boards, list_lists, list_all_lists, list_cards, search_list_cards, list_board_members, list_labels, get_card_comments, get_card_actions, get_card_checklists | | Write | create_card, update_card, move_card, set_card_position, add_comment, add_member_to_card, remove_member_from_card, add_label_to_card, remove_label_from_card, create_label | | Checklists | create_checklist, delete_checklist, add_check_item, delete_check_item, set_check_item_state |

It reuses the same credentials as the TUI (trello-tasker login, or the TRELLO_API_KEY / TRELLO_TOKEN environment variables), so there is no extra setup.

Add it to an mcp.json (Claude Code project .mcp.json, Cursor, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trello": {
      "command": "trello-tasker",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

If it isn't installed globally, point at the built bundle instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trello": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/trello_tasker/dist/cli.js", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

With the Claude Code CLI it's one line:

claude mcp add trello -- trello-tasker mcp

While an agent edits your boards through MCP, the running TUI picks the changes up on its next background sync.

Develop

npm run dev          # run from source (tsx)
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
npm run smoke        # headless render of the dashboard with mock data
npm run smoke:mcp    # MCP server round-trip against the mock client
npm run mcp          # run the MCP server from source (tsx)
npm run build        # bundle to dist/ (tsup)

Publish (optional)

npm login
npm publish          # runs the build via prepublishOnly
# then on any machine:
npm install -g trello-tasker

License

MIT