Give Claude Code a Task Board — No MCP, No API Keys

I wanted Claude to know what I was working on. Not just the code in front of it — the bigger picture. What tasks were planned, what was in progress, what was coming next.

Most solutions for this involve MCP servers, API keys, or custom integrations. I tried a few. They all felt like too much plumbing for too little payoff.

The simplest possible integration

Claude Code can read any file on your machine. If your task board is stored as a local file, Claude can already read it. No server. No tokens. No middleware.

That's the idea behind the task boards in Claude Code Toolkit. It's a Trello-style board that stores everything in a single JSON file in your home directory. You add one line to your CLAUDE.md telling Claude where the file is:

Read ~/.claude-code-toolkit/boards.json for task context

That's it. Claude now sees every board, list, and card. It knows what you're working on, what's up next, and what's done.

Why this works better than I expected

When Claude has visibility into your task board, it can:

• Pick up context faster. "Check the board and start on the next task in the Today list" is a one-line prompt that actually works.
• Understand priorities. Claude can see what's high priority, what's blocked, and what depends on what.
• Report progress naturally. At the end of a session, I can ask Claude to summarize what it accomplished in terms of the board's tasks.

Send cards directly into sessions

Reading the board is half of it. The other half is sending work directly into a running session.

Open any card, click "Send to Session," pick which session you want it in. The card's title and description get typed directly into your active Claude terminal. No copy-paste. No switching windows. Claude has the context and starts working.

You can also send an entire list — every card in order. Useful when you want Claude to work through a sequence of tasks.

Write access is coming too. Claude will be able to read and write to the board — updating card status, adding notes, moving things to Done. Two-way sync between Claude and your task board, still with zero infrastructure.

Why I needed something visual

I do a lot of strategising and planning with Claude. Markdown files, session buffers, project docs — there's no shortage of text-based context. But I found I still needed an outlet that was visual and tangible. Somewhere I could just list tasks and thoughts without them being buried in Claude's file directories.

A board gives you that. You can see everything at once. Drag things around. Colour-code by priority. It's the kind of spatial, at-a-glance view that text files can't replicate. And because it's in your menu bar, it's always one click away.

It doesn't burn through context

This is the one that surprised me. I was previously using Notion via MCP as Claude's task source. It worked, but every time Claude read from or wrote to Notion, it was burning context window on MCP tool calls, API responses, and JSON payloads. Over a long session, that adds up fast. I'd hit context limits earlier than I should have.

With a local JSON file, Claude just reads the file. One file read, minimal tokens. No MCP overhead, no API response parsing, no retry logic eating into your context. The difference is significant — sessions last longer and Claude has more room for actual work.

No cloud, no sync, no account

Everything is local. The board is a JSON file. There's no cloud service, no login, no sync. If you want to back it up, it's just a file — put it in git, copy it, whatever you want.

This also means it's fast. No loading spinners. No waiting for APIs. You click the menu bar icon and the board is there.

Compared to other approaches

I tried a bunch of different tools as Claude's task source. They all require MCP servers or API integrations. They technically work, but they add complexity, failure modes, and — critically — they eat your context window doing it. A local file has zero dependencies, zero latency, and minimal token cost.

If you need collaborative project management across a team, those tools have their place. If you need Claude to know what you're working on without burning half your context window, a local board is simpler, more reliable, and more efficient.

Try it

The task board is part of Claude Code Toolkit. $24, one-time purchase, no subscription. The board integration is the feature that surprised me the most — it changed how I prompt Claude more than anything else I've built.