Show HN: Mission Control – Open-source task management for AI agents

Hacker News · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Mission Control Open-source task management for the agentic era. The command center for solo entrepreneurs who delegate work to AI agents. Why Mission Control? AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) are powerful executors — but managing multiple agents across multiple projects is chaos. There's no shared task board, no inbox, no way to see who's working on what or whether they finished. Mission Control gives your AI agents structure. Agents get roles, inboxes, and reporting protocols. You delegate work through a visual dashboard, they execute and report back. You stay in control without micromanaging. Prioritize Eisenhower matrix tells you what matters. Drag-and-drop tasks between Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Eliminate. Delegate Assign tasks to AI agents. They get notified, pick up work, and post completion reports to your inbox. Supervise Dashboard, inbox, decisions queue. See every agent's workload, read their reports, answer their questions. How is this different from Linear, Asana, or Notion? Mission Control was built agent-first. Agents read and write tasks through a token-optimized API, report progress to your inbox, and ask you for decisions. You manage outcomes, not keystrokes. And it runs locally — no cloud dependency, no API keys, no vendor lock-in. Features Eisenhower Matrix — Prioritize by importance and urgency with drag-and-drop between quadrants Kanban Board — Track work through Not Started, In Progress, and Done columns Goal Hierarchy — Long-term goals with milestone tracking, progress bars, and linked tasks Brain Dump — Capture ideas instantly, triage into tasks later Agent Crew — 5 built-in agents + create unlimited custom agents with unique instructions Skills Library — Define reusable knowledge modules and inject them into agent prompts Multi-Agent Tasks — Assign a lead agent + collaborators for team-based work Orchestrator — Run /orchestrate to spawn all agents on pending work simultaneously Autonomous Daemon — Background process that automatically polls tasks, spawns Claude Code sessions, enforces concurrency, and provides a real-time dashboard One-Click Execution — Press play on any task card to spawn a Claude Code session; live status indicators, success/failure toasts, and automatic completion (task → done, inbox report, activity log) Token-Optimized API — Filtered queries, sparse field selection, 92% context compression (~50 tokens vs ~5,400) Inbox & Decisions — Full agent communication layer: delegation, reports, questions, and approvals Cmd+K Search — Global search across tasks, projects, goals, and brain dump entries Error Resilience — Error boundaries on every page with retry buttons, plus global error handler for crash recovery API Pagination — All 9 GET endpoints support limit and offset with a meta object (total, filtered, returned) 193 Automated Tests — Vitest suite covering validation schemas, data layer operations, and full agent communication flow Skills Injection — Skills from the library are embedded into agent command files bidirectionally (agent→skill and skill→agent) Accessibility — ARIA live regions for drag-and-drop screen reader announcements, focus trapping on detail panels CI Pipeline — GitHub Actions runs typecheck, lint, build, and tests on every push and PR Quick Start Prerequisites Requirement Why Install Node.js v20+ Runtime nodejs.org pnpm v9+ Package manager npm install -g pnpm Claude Code (recommended) Agent automation (Launch button, daemon, slash commands) npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code The web UI works standalone for task management, prioritization, and goal tracking. Claude Code is needed to execute tasks via agents. Any AI coding tool that can access local files (Cursor, Windsurf, etc.) can also participate — see Works With below. Install & Run git clone https://github.com/MeisnerDan/mission-control.git cd mission-control/mission-control # repo folder → app folder (where package.json lives) pnpm install pnpm dev Open http://localhost:3000 and click "Load Demo Data" to see it in action with sample tasks, agents, and messages. What to Try First Explore the dashboard — see task counts, agent workloads, and recent activity at a glance Drag tasks on the Priority Matrix — move tasks between Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Eliminate Click a task card to open the detail panel — edit description, subtasks, and acceptance criteria Click the 🚀 Launch button on a task assigned to an agent — spawns a Claude Code session that executes the work (requires Claude Code) Open Claude Code in this workspace and run /daily-plan to see slash commands in action How It Works Mission Control stores all data in local JSON files. No database, no cloud dependency. AI agents interact by reading and writing these files — the same source of truth the web UI uses. The Agent Loop 1. You create a task ──> Assign to an agent role (e.g., Researcher) 2. Press play (or daemon) ──> Spawns a Claude Code session with agent persona 3. Agent executes ──> Does the work, updates progress 4. Mission Control completes ──> Auto-marks done, posts report, logs activity 5. You review ──> Read reports in inbox, answer questions Multiple agents can work in parallel across different tasks. The orchestrator (/orchestrate) automates this loop for all pending tasks at once. The daemon (pnpm daemon:start) takes this further — it runs 24/7 as a background process, automatically polling for new tasks and dispatching them to agents on a configurable schedule. Testing Mission Control includes 193 automated tests across 3 suites: pnpm test # Run all tests pnpm check # Typecheck + lint pnpm verify # Full verification: typecheck + lint + build + test Suite Tests Covers Validation 90 All 17 Zod schemas — field defaults, constraints, edge cases Daemon 42 Security (credential scrubbing, path validation, binary whitelist), config loading, prompt builder, types Data Layer 19 Read/write operations, file I/O, mutex safety, archive Agent Flow 17 End-to-end: task creation → delegation → inbox → decisions → activity log Security 25 API auth, rate limiting, token/origin validation, CSRF protection Agent API Every API endpoint is designed for minimal token consumption. Your agents spend tokens doing work, not parsing bloated payloads. # Get only your in-progress tasks (~50 tokens vs ~5,400 for everything) GET /api/tasks?assignedTo=developer&kanban=in-progress # Sparse fields — return only what you need GET /api/tasks?fields=id,title,kanban # Get just the DO quadrant (important + urgent) GET /api/tasks?quadrant=do # Paginated results with metadata GET /api/tasks?limit=10&offset=0 # → { data: [...], meta: { total: 47, filtered: 47, returned: 10, limit: 10, offset: 0 } } # Compressed context — entire workspace state in ~650 tokens # (vs ~10,000+ for raw JSON files) pnpm gen:context # outputs data/ai-context.md # Run a single task — spawns a Claude Code session POST /api/tasks/:id/run # Run all eligible tasks in a project (respects concurrency limits) POST /api/projects/:id/run # Get live status of all active runs GET /api/runs All write endpoints use Zod validation (malformed data returns field-level errors) and async-mutex locking (concurrent writes from multiple agents queue safely, never corrupt data). Built-In Agents Role Handles Assign when... Me Decisions, approvals, creative direction Requires human judgment Researcher Market research, competitive analysis, evaluation Needs investigation Developer Code, bug fixes, testing, deployment Technical implementation Marketer Copy, growth strategy, content, SEO Marketing/content work Business Analyst Strategy, planning, prioritization, financials Analysis/strategy work + Custom Anything you define Create via /crew/new with custom instructions Agents are fully editable — change their name, instructions, capabilities, and linked skills at any time through the Crew UI or by editing data/agents.json directly. Slash Commands Run these in any Claude Code session opened in this workspace: Command Purpose /standup Daily standup from git + tasks + inbox + activity /daily-plan Top priorities + inbox check + decisions + brain dump triage /weekly-review Accomplishments + goal progress + stale items /orchestrate Coordinate all agents — spawn sub-agents for pending tasks /brainstorm Generate creative ideas on a topic /research Web research with structured markdown output /plan-feature Break a feature into tasks + create milestone /ship-feature Test, lint, commit + update task status + post report /pick-up-work Check inbox for new assignments, pick highest priority /report Post a status update or completion report /researcher Activate researcher agent persona /marketer Activate marketer agent persona /business-analyst Activate business analyst persona Daemon Commands pnpm daemon:start # Start the autonomous daemon (background process) pnpm daemon:stop # Stop the daemon gracefully pnpm daemon:status # Show daemon status, active sessions, and stats The daemon runs as a background Node.js process, polling tasks.json for pending work and spawning Claude Code sessions via claude -p. It enforces concurrency limits, retries failed tasks, and runs scheduled commands (daily-plan, standup, weekly-review) on cron schedules. Monitor everything from the /daemon dashboard. Note on authentication: The daemon spawns Claude Code directly via claude -p — it does not extract or transmit OAuth tokens, make raw API calls, or use the Agent SDK. Your Claude account credentials stay within Claude Code's own authentication layer, the same as running claude -p from your terminal. This is local automation of an official Anthropic product, not a third-party integration. Architecture mission-control/ Next.js 15 web app (the visual interface) mission-control/data/ JSON data files (the shared source of truth) tasks.json Tasks with Eisenhower + Kanban + agent assignment goals.json Long-term goals and milestones projects.json Projects with team members agents.json Agent registry (profiles, instructions, capabilit