Kata is an MIT-licensed, local-first issue ledger for coding agents: a single Go binary runs a daemon over SQLite that answers CLI, TUI, browser, MCP, and HTTP calls in single-digit milliseconds, so the tracker joins the agent's decision loop instead of sitting behind a hosted API. **The 4-millisecond figure is the product thesis: kata's site argues that speed changes what a tracker is for, moving it from a place agents report to at the end of a task into working memory they query before every decision.** ## What it is A Go daemon (auto-started on first use, idle-shutdown opt-in) holding issues in SQLite under `KATA_HOME`, with PostgreSQL as the production option, so the repository carries only a small `.kata.toml` binding file. Surfaces: a CLI with `--agent` and `--json` modes, a terminal TUI, a daemon-served browser workspace, a native MCP server with sixteen on-demand section loaders, a versioned HTTP API, and a Go package for in-process embedding. Issues carry short refs, parent and child links, blocks and blocked-by ordering, labels, durable cursor-addressable events, and closes that must cite evidence (`--commit`, `--test`, `--evidence`). The coordination primitives are the draw: atomic claims (`kata claim --if-unowned` with TTL leases), revision-guarded writes (`--if-match`), idempotent creates and closes, teammate identities with per-recipient inboxes, and `kata notify` attention requests. Beyond one machine: a remote daemon, GitHub and Notion and Plane and Linear and Twenty and Todoist sync, and daemon-to-daemon federation, with a `kata import --source-format beads` path off beads. Kenn Software LLC maintains it under MIT, with documentation at katatracker.com. ## Status Active and on a steady release cadence. As of 2026-10-11: 459 stars, 46 forks, created 2026-04-30, pushed 2026-10-10, latest release v0.18.0 on 2026-09-17 (teammate attention requests, issue-scoped worker credentials, search status filters), with backward compatibility promised since v0.14.0. Star History Chart The unreleased changelog section is already large: an `agent-hook` rename covering 18 native harness targets, MCP coordination tools, a `kata doctor` diagnostic, and opt-out anonymous telemetry. An HN search for the project returns zero story hits as of 2026-10-11, so the adoption evidence is the repository curve and the changelog's external contributor roster (Wes McKinney, Marius van Niekerk), not independent discussion. ## Strengths - Claims, leases, revision guards, and idempotency keys are concurrency primitives in the tracker, not conventions layered on a to-do list. - Closing is an explicit completion claim with typed evidence, `kata audit closes` replays them, and the daemon refuses to close a parent over open children. - The ledger lives beside the repo, not in it, which keeps the checkout clean and the same CLI working outside git; that is the deliberate contrast with beads carrying a database in `.beads/`. - Harness coverage is the widest recorded in this section: contract and attention hooks for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, Pi, Amp, OpenCode, OpenClaw, and more. ## Cautions - State outside git means history does not ride commits the way beads, Epiq, or Backlog.md state does; federation and remote daemons are the sync paths, and both are more moving parts than a push. - The unreleased line adds anonymous telemetry (daily install events, session duration buckets, screen views), opt-out only, a default worth checking before adopting a tool pitched as local-first. - 459 stars in under six months, a company behind a free MIT product, and an unstated business model make the long-term bet unclear. - The most interesting surfaces (the agent-hook rewrite, MCP coordination tools) sit in the unreleased section, so the documented state is ahead of the tagged releases. ## Pricing Free and open source under MIT. No paid tier is listed; hosted mode is the same daemon deployed on your own account (Cloud Run, Fly.io, Render, Railway). ## Compared to - [beads](../beads/index.md): both are local-first agent queues with atomic claims; beads carries a versioned Dolt database inside the repo and syncs over git, kata keeps the ledger beside the repo and syncs over daemons, and kata ships the import path between them. - [kanban-md](../kanban-md/index.md): the markdown-board counterpoint; choose it when state must be readable files in git, kata when query speed, event history, and harness hooks matter more. - [It's a Plan](../its-a-plan/index.md): the team-platform counterpoint, a self-hosted server board where agents hold assignee slots versus a machine-local ledger. ## Bottom line **Recommended for multi-agent work on one machine or one team of machines where the tracker should sit inside the agent loop, with GitHub sync as the mirror rather than the queue.** Not for teams whose task history must live in the repository, or anyone who needs a hosted product with a support contract. My disagreeable claim: a tracker 250 milliseconds away is a different species from one 4 milliseconds away, and most "agents cannot track work" complaints are about that gap rather than about data models. ## Changes - 2026-10-11 - Created after the entrant sweep surfaced its beads-alternative positioning and import path. - 2026-10-11 - Added the star history chart. ## See also - [beads](../beads/index.md) - the repo-carried database counterpoint and the migration source - [kanban-md](../kanban-md/index.md) - the markdown-board sibling with lease claims - [AGENTS.md](../../protocols/agents-md/index.md) - the convention kata's briefings and hooks write into - [Task Management Feature Matrix](../task-management-feature-matrix/index.md) - the category comparison this note joins ## References - https://github.com/kenn-io/kata - README: storage, surfaces, sharing models, the beads comparison and import path (fetched 2026-10-11) - https://katatracker.com/ - the site: the 4-millisecond measurements, event stream, federation, evidence-based closes, the layer argument against SaaS trackers - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kenn-io/kata/main/docs/changelog.md - release history: v0.18.0 (2026-09-17) and the unreleased agent-hook, telemetry, and MCP coordination lines - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kenn-io/kata/main/docs/workflows/agents.md - the agent contract, the 18-harness hook coverage table, teammate and inbox workflows, MCP setup - https://api.github.com/repos/kenn-io/kata - stars, forks, dates, MIT license as of 2026-10-11 - https://api.github.com/repos/kenn-io/kata/releases - v0.18.0 (2026-09-17) and the release cadence - https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=katatracker&tags=story - zero story hits as of 2026-10-11, the missing HN footprint