Your agent orchestrator is a black box. Mine is a folder.

Agent Board is a white-box alternative to black-box agent orchestration software. It presents the project as a folder with Markdown files representing each task, which correspond to where the work is at in the workflow. The source directory contains five columns - todo, doing, review, blocked, and done - as well as a threads folder.

Each ticket is represented by a file in one of the columns, depending on its status. The board itself does not spend any additional tokens deciding which model should proceed next - agents and humans still handle the work. It simply tracks where each ticket is located.

There is no need for separate status fields, databases, or background processes to maintain separate versions of reality. The real-time state lives on disk and can be inspected with standard tools. The board is deliberately stripped down to the essential information - what tickets exist, what they are doing, and what is in review or blocked.

One key feature is the explicit messaging system that allows agents to communicate explicitly about each ticket. Messages can be addressed to a ticket, another agent, or a model, and can indicate they are awaiting a reply or referencing an earlier message. This creates a clear trail of communication and dependencies between tickets.

The web UI simply projects this directory structure to give users a visual representation of the board. There is no separate state store or presence tracking. The goal is to provide a durable place for agents to hand off work without becoming another autonomous system. Agent Board aims to make the coordination transparent and understandable, rather than abstracting it away. The focus is on using existing files and tools to gain visibility into the agent workflow, rather than replacing it with a more opaque system.