Running the Project Locally

The Realtime Kanban app is available in the GitHub repository and can be run locally.

Clone the repository and install the dependencies:


git clone https://github.com/finom/realtime-kanban.git && cd realtime-kanban


npm i

Create a .env file in the root directory and add your OpenAI API key and database connection strings:

.env


OPENAI_API_KEY=change_me
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/realtime-kanban-db?schema=public"
DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED="postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/realtime-kanban-db?schema=public"
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379

Run Docker containers and the development server:


docker-compose up -d


npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to see the result. The UI should be self-explanatory. Users and tasks can be created with the UI (click “+ Add Team Member”, etc.), or by clicking one of the floating AI-related buttons: Text or Voice.

The variables in the .env file are used as follows:

OPENAI_API_KEY – your OpenAI API key, required for AI features.
DATABASE_URL – the database connection string for Prisma ORM, used to instantiate the Prisma client in DatabaseService.ts .
DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED – the database connection string for direct connections, used for migrations in prisma.config.ts .
REDIS_URL – the Redis connection string for realtime features, explained in more detail in the Polling article.

You can also define additional env variables in .env:

PASSWORD – a simple password protection for the app. It’s described in more detail in the Authentication article.
MCP_ACCESS_KEY – a simple authorization key for the MCP server using the ?mcp_access_key=your_key query param. If this variable is not set, no authorization is required. See the MCP article for details.
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN – enables the Telegram bot integration for use over a localhost tunnel. See the Telegram Integration article for more information.