Running the Project Locally

The Realtime Kanban project is available at 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

pnpm i

yarn install

bun install

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

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 development server:

docker-compose up -d

npm run dev

pnpm run dev

yarn dev

bun run dev

Open http://localhost:3000  with your browser to see the result. The UI should be self-explanatory. The users and tasks can be created with the UI interface (click ”+ Add Team Member” etc), or by clicking on one of the available AI-related floating 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 Prisma client at DatabaseService.ts 
• DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED - the database connection string for direct connections, used for migrations at prisma.config.ts .
• REDIS_URL - the Redis connection string for real-time features. Explained in more detail in the Polling article.

You can also define additional env variables in the .env file:

• PASSWORD - a simple password protection for the app. It’s described in more detail in the Authentication article.
• MCP_ACCESS_KEY - a simple authorization for MCP server using ?mcp_access_key=your_key query param. If this variable is not set, no authorization is required. It’s described in more detail in the MCP article.
• TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN - if you want to enable Telegram bot integration to be run on localhost tunnel. See the Telegram Integration article for more details.