Backlog and imports

The Backlog is a staging area for tasks before they reach the board. Switch between Board and Backlog views using the tabs at the top of the window (or press Ctrl+Shift+B / Cmd+Shift+B). The toolbar row with the view toggle is shared between both views and holds the search box, Filter button, New Task, and Import controls.

The toolbar adapts to the space it has. As the window narrows or the sidebar widens, its controls drop their text and become icons in the same positions, keeping the label as a tooltip. Nothing is hidden and nothing moves, so every control named below is still where this guide says it is, just narrower. At the smallest window size the whole row is icons.

Use the backlog to plan work, triage incoming issues, and batch-promote tasks when you’re ready to run agents.

Adding and organizing items

Getting items into the backlog and finding them again.

Creating items

Click New Task in the backlog toolbar. Enter a title, description, priority, labels, and optional file attachments. You can paste or drag-and-drop any file type as an attachment.

Descriptions support Markdown with full GitHub Flavored Markdown - tables, task lists, strikethrough, and links all render in the edit and detail views. Type @ in the description field for file path autocomplete - a dropdown lists files and directories from the project root.

Labels

Click Labels in the toolbar to manage labels. Labels are free-form text tags added during item creation or editing. From the Labels popover you can:

Rename a label across all items
Delete a label
Assign colors to labels for visual distinction

Labels and their colors are shared between the backlog and the board. When you promote a backlog item, its labels carry over to the board task.

Priorities

Click Priorities in the toolbar to manage the priority scale. The default scale is:

Level	Label	Color
0	None	Gray
1	Low	Blue
2	Medium	Yellow
3	High	Orange
4	Urgent	Red

You can rename priority levels, reorder them, add new ones, or remove existing ones. Priority colors are customizable. The priority scale is configured in backlog.priorities - see Configuration reference.

Filtering and search

Click Filter in the shared toolbar to filter by priority level and/or label. Active filters show a count badge on the Filter button. Use the search box to filter items instantly by title, description, or label text. The same search and filter controls serve the board view, where they live-filter the visible columns.

Quick Find Ctrl+Shift+F / Cmd+Shift+F also indexes backlog items alongside board tasks, session events, and projects. Use it to find a backlog item by keyword without opening the backlog view first; selecting a backlog hit switches to the backlog view, clears any search that would hide the row, scrolls it into view, and opens the item’s edit dialog.

Editing and moving items

Changing items one at a time or in bulk, and moving them to the board.

Editing items

Double-click any row to open it for editing. You can also click the pencil icon in the row’s action buttons, or right-click and select Edit from the context menu.

Multi-selection and bulk operations

Click a row to select it, or use the checkboxes. The header checkbox selects/deselects all visible items. When multiple items are selected, a bulk toolbar appears at the bottom with Move to Board and Delete actions.

Right-clicking with multiple items selected shows a context menu that operates on the entire selection (e.g., “Move 5 to Board”, “Delete 3 items”).

Right-click any backlog row to open a context menu:

Move to Board - submenu listing all available columns as targets
Edit - open the item for editing
Delete - permanently remove the item

Drag to reorder

Drag rows by the grip handle on the left to manually reorder items, or Tab to the grip and use Space and the arrow keys (see Dragging from the keyboard). Drag-to-reorder works even when filters or search are active.

When you sort by a column header (priority, title, created date), manual reorder is disabled until the sort is cleared.

Promoting to the board

Select one or more items, then click Move to Board in the bulk toolbar. Choose a target column and the items become board tasks. If the target column has auto-spawn enabled, an agent session starts immediately.

You can also promote individual items using the arrow icon in the row action buttons or the context menu.

Labels and priorities carry over from backlog items to board tasks.

Importing from external sources

Click Import in the backlog toolbar to pull tasks from external project management tools.

Supported sources

GitHub Issues - import issues from any GitHub repository
GitHub Projects - import items from a GitHub Project board
Azure DevOps Work Items - import work items from Azure DevOps boards, sprints, or backlogs
Asana - import tasks from an Asana project

Prerequisites

GitHub: The gh CLI must be installed and authenticated. For GitHub Projects, the project scope is required (gh auth refresh -s project).
Azure DevOps: The az CLI must be installed, authenticated (az login), and the azure-devops extension installed (az extension add --name azure-devops).
Asana: A personal access token (PAT). Generate one at Asana Developer Console and paste it into the Asana connect dialog on first use.

GitHub and Azure DevOps use the CLIs’ own sign-in, so Kangentic stores no credential for them. The Asana token is encrypted with the operating system’s secure storage (the macOS Keychain, Windows DPAPI, or a Linux keyring) and saved as asana-credentials.json beside config.json. On a Linux machine with no keyring it is saved unprotected, and the next time Kangentic reads it with a keyring running, it encrypts it.

Adding a source

Click Import > Add Source
Choose a provider (GitHub, Azure DevOps, or Asana) and source type
Paste the full URL (e.g., https://github.com/owner/repo, https://github.com/orgs/owner/projects/1, https://dev.azure.com/org/project, or https://app.asana.com/0/<project-id>)
Click Connect - Kangentic verifies CLI authentication (GitHub, Azure DevOps) or prompts for the PAT (Asana) and saves the source
For Azure DevOps sprint URLs, items are automatically scoped to that sprint’s iteration path

Importing items

Click a saved source to open the import dialog
Browse items with filtering by title, ID (a leading # is ignored, so #276 finds issue 276), type, status, assignee, and labels
Switch the Open / Closed / All state filter to change which items show (Open by default)
Use the “Imported” toggle to hide already-imported items (on by default)
Click anywhere on a row to select it (or use the checkbox)
Click Import (N) to pull selected items into the backlog

Since v0.42.0 the dialog opens from a per-project cache of the source’s items, so the list paints at once, and a “Syncing…” line at the bottom shows while it fetches only the items changed since the last sync in the background. The cache survives an app restart and a project switch, and the Open / Closed / All toggle filters it on the spot, without another fetch. If the sync fails, the error banner carries a Retry; once every item is imported, Refresh to check for new items on the empty state refetches the whole source rather than only the changes. GitHub Issues and Azure DevOps fetch incrementally; Asana and GitHub Projects re-fetch in full on every sync, so the result is the same but the sync costs what it always did.

Imported items include the title, description (markdown), labels, and assignee from the source. Inline images in issue bodies are downloaded as backlog attachments. Azure DevOps work item comments are fetched at import time, for the selected items only, and folded into each description; the import toast says so if any could not be fetched, alongside the skipped duplicates and attachments it already reports. A small source icon (e.g., the GitHub mark) appears on imported items linking back to the original ticket.

Saved sources persist in .kangentic/config.json per project and appear in the Import dropdown for quick re-syncing.