File
SMF·TRELLO
Received on
31.07.2026
Reviewed on
28.09.2026
Exhibits annexed
3
Questions
4

SMF·TRELLO

Can a prompt replace Trello?

Project management — kanban boards

Almost Verdict recorded on 28.09.2026 · Verified on 31.07.2026
Price
$12.50/moSource: trello.com · Checked on July 31, 2026
Per year
$150
Build time
A weekend
Votes
0 votes
YesAlmost (checked)Not yet

Exhibit tracking slip

Exhibit A The prompt
Exhibit B What you lose
Exhibit C Why people still pay: ubiquity and power-up ecosystem
Exhibit Q Questions

Verdict

A board with lists and draggable cards is the most-rebuilt piece of software on the internet and a weekend gets a good one. What Trello actually sells at the Premium tier is the extra views over the same cards, the automation robot, and the fact that anyone you invite already knows how it works. None of those is a moat, so this is a kinda — but the last one is the reason a self-hosted board so often ends up used by one person.

Exhibit B — What you lose

Exhibit A — The prompt

Received on31.07.2026
Build a kanban board and then do the two things that separate a good one from a demo: real drag-and-drop ordering, and a second view over the same cards.

Stack: your choice, Postgres, Docker Compose.

Boards, Lists, Cards. A Card has a title, description in Markdown, members, labels, a due date with a done flag, a checklist, comments, attachments and a cover colour.

Ordering is the part that is always done badly. Store position as a fractional value between neighbours rather than a dense integer sequence, so a drag writes one row instead of renumbering the list. Handle precision exhaustion by renormalising that list's positions in a background pass. Write a test that performs two hundred sequential drags to the same position and asserts the ordering stays correct.

Drag must be optimistic in the UI and reconciled against the server response, with a visible revert if the write fails — a board that silently loses a drag is worse than one that is slow.

Second and third views over the same cards, across all boards you are a member of:
- **Calendar**: cards with due dates, dragging a card changes the due date.
- **Table**: every card as a row with board, list, labels, members and due date, sortable and filterable, with inline editing.

Automation, kept small: rules of the form "when a card is moved to list X" or "when a due date passes" or "every weekday at time T", then actions from a closed set — move, archive, add or remove a label, add a member, post a comment, set a due date. Log every run. Cap chain depth at two.

Filters that persist per board per user: by label, member, due window, and free text.

Also: card templates per list, board archive with search, and JSON export of a whole board in a documented shape.

Write tests for fractional ordering under repeated inserts, for the calendar drag writing the same field as the card editor, and for automation chain-depth capping.

Do not build Power-Ups, mobile apps, or real-time multiplayer.

Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.

Exhibit B — What you lose

  • B.1 the mobile apps and offline access
  • B.2 the Power-Up ecosystem and its hundreds of integrations
  • B.3 real-time multiplayer, so two people never see the same drag
  • B.4 invitees who already know how it works
  • B.5 Atlassian identity and the SSO sold alongside it

Prior art

Exhibit C — Why people still pay: ubiquity and power-up ecosystem

Because zero training is worth real money, and because Trello is where a group of people who agree on nothing else will agree to put their cards.

Questions

Why does card ordering deserve a test with two hundred drags?

Because fractional positions run out of floating-point precision after roughly fifty inserts between the same two neighbours, and the symptom is cards that will not stay put. It is the classic kanban bug and it only appears after the demo.

Is optimistic drag worth the extra complexity?

Yes. A board where the card visibly waits for the server feels broken even when it is fast, and the reconciliation is a dozen lines. What matters is showing a revert when the write actually fails.

What is the honest risk of self-hosting a board for a team?

That you are the only one who uses it. Trello's advantage is that everyone already knows it and it is on their phone; a self-hosted board is one more login and no notification, and adoption is what a board is for.

Can I get my Trello boards out?

Yes — every board exports as JSON from the menu, including cards, lists, checklists, comments and label definitions. Attachments are URLs, so download them separately before closing the account.

Receipt

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