ContextSwitch vs Kanban Tools
A native macOS kanban built for solo developers, not project managers
Solo developers need project management but not project management software. You want to see what you are working on, what is next, and what is blocked. You do not want sprint planning, team velocity charts, or role-based access control. The tools that exist either assume you are part of a team or force you into a cloud-first workflow that adds friction to what should be simple.
ContextSwitch is a native macOS kanban built specifically for developers managing multiple projects. It stores everything locally in SQLite files, supports multiple databases for different contexts, and includes a built-in MCP server so your AI assistant can manage your tasks alongside you.
Trello (Cloud Kanban)
Trello is the default kanban board. It is simple, visual, and free to start. For teams collaborating on shared projects, Trello works well. The card-and-column metaphor is intuitive, and the ecosystem of Power-Ups extends it in useful ways.
But everything lives in Atlassian's cloud. If you work offline -- on a flight, at a coffee shop with bad WiFi, or just because you prefer not to depend on a connection -- you are stuck staring at a loading spinner. Trello has no concept of multiple databases; everything lives in boards within a single workspace. There is no standard protocol for AI integration. If you want Claude to create a task or check your backlog, there is no supported way to do that. ContextSwitch runs entirely locally, stores data in SQLite files you own and can back up or move freely, and exposes your tasks through MCP so Claude Code can read and write to your board as naturally as it reads your codebase.
Linear (Team Project Management)
Linear is excellent software. The design is polished, the keyboard shortcuts are thoughtful, and the engineering-focused workflow with cycles, projects, and triage is genuinely well conceived. If you are part of an engineering team, Linear is hard to beat.
The problem is that Linear is built for teams. It has sprints, cycles, project roadmaps, team analytics, and organizational hierarchies. If you are a solo developer tracking your side projects, a freelancer juggling client work, or someone who just wants a board for personal tasks, Linear's team features are overhead. You are paying for collaboration infrastructure you will never use. Linear also requires an account and lives entirely in the cloud. ContextSwitch gives you a kanban board, a project diary for logging decisions and progress, and multi-database support for separating work from personal projects -- without any of the team machinery you do not need.
Todoist (Task Management)
Todoist is a great task list. It handles recurring tasks, priorities, labels, and natural language input better than most. If your workflow is fundamentally about checking things off a list, Todoist delivers.
But Todoist is not a board. You cannot visualize work in progress, drag tasks between stages, or see your backlog at a glance alongside what you are actively working on. The mental model is a list, not a workflow. Todoist is also cloud-first with subscription pricing for premium features like reminders and comments. ContextSwitch gives you a real kanban with drag-and-drop, status swimlanes, and a unified timeline across all your databases. You can see what is in progress, what is blocked, and what is done -- visually, without scrolling through a flat list.
GitHub Projects and Issues
If all your work lives in a single GitHub repository, GitHub's built-in project management can work. Issues map to tasks, project boards give you columns, and everything is tightly coupled to your code. For open source maintainers triaging a single repo, it is a reasonable choice.
But if you are juggling multiple projects, personal tasks, side experiments, and client work, GitHub's project management is too tightly coupled to repositories. You cannot easily track "buy groceries" alongside "fix the auth bug in the client project" alongside "research that new framework for the side project." ContextSwitch lets you keep separate .db files for work, personal, and side projects while still seeing everything in one unified timeline. Each database is a portable file you control.
- Multi-database: Separate .db files for work, personal, and side projects -- each portable and fully self-contained
- Built-in MCP server: Claude Code reads and writes tasks directly. "Add a task to fix the auth bug" just works.
- Project diary: Log progress, decisions, and notes alongside your kanban in a unified timeline
- Native macOS: Fast, keyboard-driven, with menu bar integration for quick task capture
- Free: No per-seat pricing, no subscription, no feature gates behind paid tiers
- AI-composable: Lexicon prompts can reference ContextSwitch tasks -- a "Tech Debt Audit" prompt can automatically create tasks from its findings