Project management — GitHub Projects only

decision Sat Jun 20 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) decisionsarchitectureproject-managementgithub-projectskanbanroadmap

Project management — GitHub Projects only

Decision

Family-wide project / task management runs on a single GitHub Projects board on chirag127/oriz (the master repo). The board ships three views: kanban (Backlog ? In progress ? In review ? Done), table (sortable / filterable across all custom fields), and roadmap (Gantt-style timeline grouped by Iteration).

Notion, Obsidian Tasks, Linear, ClickUp, Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Height, Basecamp, Todoist — all REJECTED.

The split between knowledge artifacts and tasks is firm:

Documentation / decisions / runbooks / glossary lives in the knowledge/ OKF bundle inside the master repo.
Tasks / sprint plans / roadmap / status lives in the GitHub Projects board on the same master repo.

User direction 2026-06-20: "GitHub Projects only — locked, decision file only."

Why

Free, GitHub-native, no card. Projects v2 is part of every GitHub account at zero cost — no quota cliff at family scale, no card on file (rules/no-card-on-file + rules/no-subscriptions).
Lives next to the code + issues. Issues filed per bug-tracker-github-issues-only attach directly to project items via the same web UI; cross-repo issues feed into one board without API plumbing.
One source of truth for "what's next". The user has one brain working across 11 sites + N extensions + N packages — one board. No Notion-vs-Linear-vs-Obsidian fragmentation.
OKF bundle covers documentation. Per okf-as-canonical-format, the family already has a structured documentation system in the repo. A separate Notion workspace would duplicate glossary / decisions / runbooks against the OKF bundle and inevitably drift.
Markdown-in-repo posture extends naturally. Per cms-markdown-in-repo-only, content lives in git. Tasks live next to the issues that back them. Both surfaces avoid SaaS lock-in.

Why not the rejected options

Tool	Why rejected
Notion	Free Personal tier caps blocks / file uploads; Team tier requires card; second editorial surface that drifts vs. the OKF `knowledge/` bundle
Obsidian Tasks	Local-vault-first model fights the everything-public-OSS posture; sync requires Obsidian Sync subscription or third-party plugin reliability
Linear	Same rejection as in `bug-tracker-github-issues-only` — caps + card + duplicate tracker
ClickUp	Card past free; UI overhead; second source of truth
Asana / Monday.com	Both card-required at family scale
Trello	Card-shaped, no issue-link, no roadmap view on free tier
Height / Basecamp	Card past free / Basecamp paid-only
Todoist	Free tier caps projects; card past 5 projects; not multi-repo-aware
Jira	Already rejected for issues; same applies for projects

Implications

Board structure

Single board at https://github.com/users/chirag127/repos/<n> (user-scoped so it spans every repo in the org). Item sources:

Issues from any chirag127/oriz* repo (auto-add via workflow).
Draft items typed directly in the board (convert to issue when scoped to a specific repo).
Pull requests from any chirag127/oriz* repo.

Custom fields

Field	Type	Values
`Status`	single-select	`Backlog` / `In progress` / `In review` / `Blocked` / `Done`
`Priority`	single-select	`P0 (now)` / `P1 (this week)` / `P2 (this month)` / `P3 (someday)`
`Site`	single-select	every active `chirag127/oriz*` repo + `family-wide`
`Iteration`	iteration	1-week iterations rolling forward
`Effort`	single-select	`XS` / `S` / `M` / `L` / `XL`
`Blocked by`	text	issue / PR ref or external dependency

Views

Kanban (default) — grouped by Status, filtered to current Iteration.
Table — full sortable / filterable grid; the spreadsheet view for triage sweeps.
Roadmap — grouped by Iteration, scaled by Effort, Gantt-style timeline.
By site — table view filtered to one Site for site-specific status checks.

Automation

Issue opened on any chirag127/oriz* repo ? auto-added to board with Status: Backlog (workflow file in chirag127/oriz/.github/workflows/).
PR opened ? auto-added with Status: In review.
PR merged ? linked issue auto-set to Status: Done.
All automations use built-in GitHub Projects workflows — no third-party action, no external script.

What we don't do

No second project tool — even for "personal" / "scratch" / "ideas". The board's Backlog is the single inbox.
No external roadmap site (Productboard / Canny / Trello) for public roadmap surfacing — the GitHub Projects board itself is shareable as a public URL when the user opts to make it public. Until then, roadmap stays internal-but-everyone's-an-internal given the OSS posture.
No time tracking on the board. That lives separately under; the Projects board tracks plan + status, not effort actuals.
No Notion / Obsidian "second brain" for project context. The OKF bundle is the second brain; the Projects board is the active work surface.

Knowledge vs. tasks split

Surface	Lives in	Examples
Architectural decisions	`knowledge/decisions/`	"We use GitHub Projects" (this file)
Service catalog	`knowledge/services/`	"Toggl Track is the manual time tracker"
Glossary / concepts	`knowledge/glossary/`	What `oriz-kit` means
Runbooks	`knowledge/runbooks/`	How to rotate a leaked secret
Active tasks	GitHub Projects board	"Wire up Klaro on oriz-blog-site"
Bugs	GitHub Issues per repo	"Auth callback returns 500 on Edge"
Roadmap	GitHub Projects roadmap view	Q3 milestone targets

Revisit trigger

Re-open this decision only if any one of these holds:

GitHub Projects v2 develops a quota cliff hitting family scale (no signal of this in 2026-06).
A non-GitHub collaborator joins and explicitly cannot work on the Projects board.
The user explicitly asks for a swap.

Until then, GitHub Projects is the answer.

Cross-refs

Bug tracker — GitHub Issues only
CMS markdown-in-repo only — sister "no SaaS sidecar" decision for content
OKF as canonical format — knowledge/ bundle covers docs
Per-repo CI workflows — workflows live in each repo, not a central scheduler
— separate concern, separate tools
No card-on-file rule
No subscriptions rule