I tried OpenProject and Vikunja. Then I built Agila.

Daniel D — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 16:37:45 +0000

In 2023 I started a secure-communications product with a small team: me (founder, product owner, business owner, sysadmin), one developer who needed clear specs and timelines, and two part-time QA specialists. That product is still private (to be released by eoy), so I won't name it here. What I will tell you is how we managed the work — and how that frustration became Agila.

We started in a spreadsheet

Like a lot of tiny teams, we began in a Google Sheet. It worked until it didn't: ownership got fuzzy, status lived in cells nobody trusted, and "what's blocked?" meant scrolling and guessing.

So I went looking for a real project tool.

OpenProject: capable, but heavy

We landed on OpenProject. It was okay. It had a Kanban view, which is mostly what we used. But the overall feel was closer to Microsoft Project than to a lightweight board: lots of structure, lots of ceremony, more software than a small team needed to ship.

Vikunja: lighter, still not ours

We moved to Vikunja and used it for a few months. It was more approachable than OpenProject. We still never really liked it. It didn't match how we wanted to move work day to day.

Jira was never on the table. I've used it in enough organizations to know it's powerful — and far too big for our needs.

Building our way out

I got fed up. AI-assisted coding was becoming practical enough to try for real, so I used it to build the minimal Kanban pieces we actually needed for our own flow. Not a clone of everything. Just enough board to keep specs, status, and next steps honest.

That's how the project started.

Then it became Agila

In parallel with managing our primary product, I kept going. Why stop at "good enough for us"? The Kanban side project grew into what Agila is today: an open-source, multi-view agile project management tool — free to self-host on your own infrastructure, or hosted if you want us to run it.

As we add more people to the development team, that choice keeps fitting: enough structure for shared ownership and QA without the ceremony tax of tools we already rejected.

What Agila is now

Agila is a collaborative Kanban workspace with real-time updates, soft WIP, optional sprints, Google / GitHub / Microsoft 365 SSO, and an optional AI agent that uses your API key.

Day-to-day pieces we care about:

Kanban-first, with list, Gantt, and calendar when you need them
Edit cards in place — stay on the board instead of living in modals
Soft WIP that warns when a column is overloaded, without freezing the team
Column policy notes so entry/exit rules sit on the board
Admin / User / Viewer roles plus per-board membership
Full product on GitHub — self-host free, or use hosted plans

We're younger than Jira or Asana. Integrations and native mobile are still maturing. We publish an honest comparison that includes where other tools still win.

Drag-and-drop with ~200 cards

A board that stutters trains people to abandon it. We stress-tested Agila with ~200 cards and spent time actually dragging them around — across columns and up/down long boards.

What we saw:

Jira often hides other columns while you're dragging. That "helps" the drag, but you lose spatial context mid-move.
Many competitors feel fine for short cross-column moves, then get sluggish when you drag up or down across multiple screenfuls.
Agila stayed extremely fast in both directions — horizontal and vertical — even with a loaded board.

Not a lab chart. Just the practical test: does the board stay usable when it's full of real work?

Built because we needed it

Agila wasn't a pitch deck looking for a problem. It was a small team managing a serious product who refused to live in tools that were either too heavy or never quite felt right — until we built our own.

If you're evaluating boards, try the interactive preview on agila.dev, read the compare page, or poke the open-source repo. We share updates on X at @agila_app.Sharp feedback welcome. We built this to use it.

ActuFeed: Get Latest News, YouTube channel updates

Daniel D — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:14:50 +0000

The Problem I Wanted to Solve

Every morning I used to waste way too much time scrolling through endless articles, trying to figure out what actually mattered.

Reading news sources, multiple websites, and noisy social media feeds, catching up on the news became exhausting. I didn’t want to read everything — I just wanted the key highlights from sources I trust, and I wanted to do it fast.

So I built ActuFeed.

Update — April 2026 🎉

ActuFeed is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and macOS!

→ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/actufeed/id6761419091

The tool allows me to:

Choose exactly which sources I follow (RSS feeds, news sites, blogs…)
Quickly see the most important updates
Group by tabs different feeds of interest
Filter articles, search
Stay focused without distractions, ads, or algorithmic manipulation

Also, newest articles are auto-added every 5 minutes

You can try it instantly here (free, no ads, no membership req'd):
👉 https://actufeed.com

Note: While you can read summaries and highlights directly in ActuFeed, opening the full article on the publisher’s website may require a subscription or membership.

Why This Approach Works for Me

Instead of fighting with bloated readers or algorithm-driven platforms, ActuFeed gives me full control. I open it, switch to my preferred language, scan my tabs, and I’m done — usually in under 5–10 minutes.

If you’re tired of spending too much time on news or feeling overwhelmed by information overload, I invite you to give ActuFeed a quick try.

How It Works Under the Hood

ActuFeed is built as a lightweight, modern web application using Vite + vanilla JavaScript with a minimal Node.js CORS proxy. The coolest part? Almost everything happens directly in your browser: feed fetching, filtering, tab organization, language switching, and even caching are handled client-side.
This design makes the app extremely lightweight — it requires very few server resources and runs smoothly even on modest hardware. Because user data and preferences are stored locally in the browser, there's no database or heavy backend.
The project is fully open source, so you can easily self-host it with Docker in just a few minutes if you prefer running it on your own server.

Screenshots

Experience on Desktop

ActuFeed is now available on iPhone, iPad, and macOS. The app provides a great experience on all devices, with an especially polished and comfortable interface on larger screens thanks to its clean design, intuitive tab navigation, and smooth feed management.

Mobile Experience (iOS)

ActuFeed also works well on iPhone, iPad and MacOS — you can read articles on the go.

Here’s how it looks on iOS:

On GitHub

You can find the code on GitHub here:
https://github.com/drenlia/actufeed

Star the repo, open issues, or even contribute if you’d like to help improve it!

I’d love to hear your thoughts — does this customizable news reader appeal to you?

DEV Community: Daniel D