Core concepts

This page defines the terms used throughout GVenta Kanban Board and the rest of this documentation. Read it once and the board, the story pages and the API will all make more sense.

Vocabulary

Concept	Description
Project	The top-level container. Has a name, an auto-generated URL slug, a description, an optional banner image, an optional linked Git repository, an owner, a member list and its own set of swim lanes. Can be favorited, archived and restored.
Swim lane	A named, colored, ordered column on a project board. Each lane maps to one of nine status types: To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Review, Testing, Done, Deployed, Abandoned, Archived. Lanes can be created, renamed, recolored, reordered by drag-and-drop, hidden and deleted. Four defaults (Backlog, In Progress, Review, Done) are created automatically with every new project.
Story	A unit of work: title, Markdown description, type, priority, status, story points, due date, assignee, creator, epic membership, lane and board position.
Story type	Coding, Bug, Research, Design, Documentation, DevOps, Testing, each with its own icon and color.
Priority	Low, Medium, High, Critical, each with its own color, and used to order automation work queues.
Status	The four canonical states, Backlog, In Progress, Review and Done, kept automatically in sync with the story’s lane.
Epic	A story flagged as an epic. Other stories become its children. Epics render progress bars, completion percentages and per-status roll-ups everywhere they appear.
Task	A lightweight checklist item inside a story: title, optional description, completion state, creator and completion timestamp.
Dependency	A directed “depends on” link between two stories. The application refuses to create cycles. Each story shows both what it depends on and what it blocks.
Comment	A Markdown-rendered discussion entry on a story. Supports threading (replies), inline editing with an “(edited)” marker, soft deletion, an urgent flag, per-user read tracking, emoji reactions and file attachments.
Mention	An @name inside a comment. Resolved against user names and email prefixes, recorded as a mention, surfaced in the global bell menu with an unread badge, and filterable on the Comments page.
Attachment	A file attached to a story or a comment, stored privately in object storage and streamed back through the application’s own domain.
Watcher	A user subscribed to a story’s email notifications. Commenting on a story subscribes you automatically.
Favorite	A per-user project pin, shown on the Dashboard and Projects pages.
Quick link	An automatically computed shortcut list: the two projects you visit most, plus the three you visited most recently, deduplicated.
Pulse entry	A heartbeat record posted by an automated agent: agent name, activity description, status (success / warning / error), optional related story IDs and optional run duration.
Activity log	The system-written audit trail of user and agent actions across projects, stories and comments.
API token	A bearer credential with a name, an ability list (read, write, admin) and an optional expiry.

Story types

Every story has exactly one type. Each type has its own icon and color, so a glance at a card tells you what kind of work it is.

Type	Typical use
Coding	Feature and implementation work
Bug	Defects to fix
Research	Research spikes and investigations
Design	Design work
Documentation	Writing and documentation
DevOps	Infrastructure and operational chores
Testing	Test passes and QA

The “typical use” column is guidance only; the application does not treat one type differently from another beyond its icon and color. You can filter the board, the story search and the epic lists by type.

Priorities

Stories carry one of four priorities: Low, Medium, High or Critical. Each has its own color, shown as a chip on cards and in tables.

Priority is more than decoration. The automation work queue that hands out unassigned work orders stories Critical first, then High, Medium and Low, and oldest-first within each priority. See Pulse and AI agents.

Statuses and lane status types

There are two related, but distinct, ideas here.

The four canonical statuses

Every story has one of four canonical statuses: Backlog, In Progress, Review or Done. These are the values you see in the status chip, the status filter, the Dashboard columns and the per-status roll-ups on epics.

The nine lane status types

Every swim lane maps to one of nine status types:

Status type
To Do
In Progress
Blocked
Review
Testing
Done
Deployed
Abandoned
Archived

Lane status types let you model your real process (a Blocked lane, a Testing lane, a Deployed lane) while the story’s canonical status stays simple enough for reporting.

How they stay in sync

A story’s canonical status and its lane are kept in step automatically. Drag a card into a different lane and its status is re-derived from that lane’s status type. Change a story’s status on the edit form or through the API and the story is moved to the matching lane, preferring the project’s default lane for that status type. The board and the status field cannot drift apart. Details are on Automatic behaviors and safeguards.

Why it matters: You can have as many lanes as your workflow needs, named and colored however you like, and your reporting still rests on four statuses that never disagree with the board.

Where these concepts appear

• Projects, favorites and quick links: Dashboard and projects
• Swim lanes and cards: The project board
• Stories, epics, tasks, dependencies and attachments: Stories, epics and tasks
• Comments, mentions and watchers: Comments and mentions
• Pulse entries and API tokens: Pulse and AI agents and API getting started