Now, not someday.

nowtask is task management for teams: a board with statuses and fields that follow your process, rules that move tasks, assign people and watch deadlines, and the same API in the hands of your AI agents. One installation serves many organizations, every organization is isolated in the database by row level security, and the interface speaks Polish, English and German.

AI agents work here on equal terms with people. The repository ships an MCP server that gives an agent 31 tools over the same API the interface uses, from searching and editing tasks through comments and bulk operations to automation rules and metrics. An agent authenticates with an API key that carries scopes, and every write it makes stays in the task history and in the audit log under the key's name.

Screenshots

The board with the scrum preset, WIP limits per column	The list with grouping, filters and the saved views
A task with subtasks, custom fields, comments and the rules that touched it	The timeline, grouped by epic
A rule with its trigger, conditions, actions and run log	The AI agents screen that generates the client configuration
The team overview	The same board in the dark theme

What it does

• Organizations: many independent organizations in one installation, a person can belong to several, and PostgreSQL row level security keeps their data apart underneath the application, not only in it.
• Roles and permissions: administrator, manager, member and guest out of the box, custom roles composed from eighteen permissions, protected custom fields visible only with a permission, invitations with reminders, an audit log.
• Projects and workflow: statuses grouped into not started, in flight and done, allowed transitions with requirements, WIP limits, custom fields, labels, epics and sprints. New projects start from a scrum, kanban or waterfall preset.
• Views: board, list, timeline and calendar over the same data, saved views with nested filter groups shared across the team, a per-user default view, search and a command palette.
• Automation: rules with a trigger, nested conditions and ordered actions, tested on a task before they go live, with a run log that says what happened and why.
• Notifications and integrations: an in-app bell, mail over SMTP, webhooks signed with HMAC-SHA256 that format themselves for Slack and Discord, and a GitHub App that turns branches, pull requests, reviews, CI runs and releases into task activity and keeps issues in sync.
• AI agents: API keys with disjoint scopes, an MCP server over stdio or Streamable HTTP, and a screen that generates the configuration for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI and VS Code.
• Interface: Angular 22 with signals and zoneless change detection, light and dark themes, five accents, density and radius settings, three languages, realtime updates over server-sent events, CSV and XLSX export.

Status

nowtask is at 0.1.0, the first public release. The code is complete against the design records in docs/ and the documentation describes what is actually implemented, but the project is young and has not been through a long production life yet.

Verified on a local stack built from this repository: signup, invitations and organizations with row level security, every view, presets and rules, the API key path and the MCP server over HTTP with Claude Code, mail through Mailpit, and the container images from both compose files. The backend tests cover the tenant schema, the webhook payloads for Slack and Discord, the GitHub webhook signature and event handling, and every mail template in every language.

Not yet exercised against the live service, only against the protocol or the tests:

• Slack and Discord delivery. The payloads are tested, the deliveries are not.
• A real SMTP relay. Mailpit is what the test stack uses.
• The GitHub App against a live installation. Signatures and events are tested with recorded payloads.
• MCP clients other than Claude Code. The agents screen generates their configuration from their documentation.
• Corporate sign-in. NOWTASK_SIGNUP_MODE=sso-only is accepted and the interface shows the button, but there is no identity provider behind it yet.

If you run nowtask against one of those, an issue saying what worked or did not is the most useful thing you can send.

Quick start

Published images with Docker Compose:

git clone https://github.com/arthurr0/nowtask.app.git
cd nowtask.app
cp .env.example .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Set NOWTASK_DB_PASSWORD, NOWTASK_APP_DB_PASSWORD and NOWTASK_APP_URL in .env first; compose refuses to start without the passwords. Then open http://localhost:8080, create the first account at /signup and the wizard takes you through the organization and the first project.

Everything from source, with Mailpit catching the mail at http://localhost:8025:

docker compose up --build

Service	Address
Interface	http://localhost:8080
API	http://localhost:8081/api/meta
MCP server	http://localhost:8080/mcp
Mailpit	http://localhost:8025
PostgreSQL	localhost:5433, user and password nowtask

The longer version, with the reverse proxy, the two database roles and backups, is in docs/install.md.

Your first rule in 60 seconds

1. Board: add a task to Sprint backlog and assign it to yourself. The preset rule "Work started" moves it to In progress, and Automations shows the run.
2. Automations, New rule: trigger "when a task is assigned", condition "priority is High", action "add the label urgent". Press Test on a task to see what it would do, then Save.
3. Board: assign a high priority task to someone. The label appears, the run log says why.
4. AI agents, New key: name it after the agent, keep the default read scopes, copy the generated claude mcp add command and run it.
5. Ask the agent what is in progress. The answer comes from the same board.

Connecting an agent

The MCP server runs alongside the instance and nginx exposes it under /mcp, so an agent needs neither the repository nor Node. The client brings the key in a header:

claude mcp add --transport http nowtask https://nowtask.example.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer nt_9f2c..."

Scopes are disjoint: tasks:write grants no right to delete, and tasks:delete has to be granted on its own. They are checked by the API, not by the MCP server, so going around it with a custom client gains nothing. Keys, scopes, every client and the trace an agent leaves are in docs/ai-agents.md.

Documentation

Install	Published images, building from source, running the parts on the host, reverse proxy, backups
Configuration	Every environment variable, the database roles, mail, the GitHub App, security defaults
Architecture	Backend modules, row level security, authentication, events and rules, the frontend, the MCP server
AI agents	API keys, scopes, every MCP client, the tool list
Integrations	In-app notifications, webhooks, Slack and Discord, mail, the GitHub App
MCP server	Running the server, its variables, error handling, troubleshooting
API contract	Every path and payload, binding for the backend and the frontend
Release process	How a release is cut and verified
Design records	Multi-tenancy, presets and onboarding as they were designed

Project layout

backend/           Gradle multi-module Spring Boot 4.1 application on Java 25
  shared/          permissions, organization context, exceptions, events
  identity/        users, organizations, roles, sessions, API keys, audit log
  workspace/       projects, statuses, custom fields, labels, saved views, presets
  tasks/           tasks, subtasks, comments, relations, history, watchers
  automation/      rule engine and run log
  analytics/       dashboard metrics
  integrations/    notifications, webhooks, mail, the GitHub App
  realtime/        server-sent events
  exports/         CSV and XLSX
  app/             Spring configuration, security, migrations, entry point
frontend/          Angular 22, signals, zoneless, Tailwind 4
mcp/               the MCP server, TypeScript
docs/              the documentation this README links to
brand/             logo, favicon, palette

Development

docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d        # PostgreSQL 18 on port 5433
cd backend && ./gradlew :app:bootRun                   # http://localhost:8081
cd backend && ./gradlew build                          # compile and test, PostgreSQL from Testcontainers
cd frontend && pnpm install && pnpm start              # http://localhost:4200, proxies /api
cd frontend && pnpm exec prettier --check .            # the check CI runs
cd mcp && npm install && npm run typecheck && npm run build

Java 25, Node 24 with pnpm 11 for the frontend, Node 22 or newer for the MCP server, and Docker or Podman for PostgreSQL and the backend tests.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md covers the development setup, the coding rules, the tests and what a pull request needs. Behaviour in the project follows the Code of Conduct.

Security problems do not belong in an issue. SECURITY.md explains how to report one privately and what is in scope.

Releases are cut from tags, the process is in docs/release-process.md.

License

Business Source License 1.1, full text in LICENSE.

In short: the code is open, you can read it, change it and run it yourself. Production use is free for up to 25 users in total. Above that threshold, and when offering nowtask to third parties as a hosted service, a commercial license is required: kontakt@nowtask.app. Every version switches to Apache 2.0 on 20 August 2029.

The official instance at https://nowtask.app is run by nowtask.