4ga Boards

4ga Boards is a lightweight, real‑time task management platform designed for self‑hosting environments. At its core it implements a classic Kanban‑style workflow—projects, boards, lists, cards, and nested tasks—while providing a rich client experience through WebSocket‑driven updates. The application exposes a RESTful API alongside GraphQL endpoints, allowing developers to integrate board data into custom dashboards or third‑party services. Its architecture is intentionally modular: a Node.js/Express backend serves the API, while a Vue 3 front‑end consumes it via a dedicated SDK that abstracts WebSocket subscriptions and optimistic UI updates.

• Backend: Node.js 20.x with Express, leveraging TypeScript for type safety. Database access is handled through Prisma ORM, which supports PostgreSQL as the primary data store and offers a migration framework that can be applied via Docker Compose or Kubernetes operators.
• Frontend: Vue 3 with Vite, using Pinia for state management. The UI is built around a custom markdown editor powered by ProseMirror, enabling rich text editing directly within card descriptions.
• Real‑time Layer: Socket.io is used for bidirectional communication, ensuring that board changes propagate instantly across all connected clients without full page reloads.
• Containerization: A single docker-compose.yml file defines the service stack (app, PostgreSQL, Redis for caching). Kubernetes manifests are also available, making it trivial to scale the API horizontally or run the application in a managed cluster.
• Authentication: OAuth2 integration with Google, GitHub, and Microsoft is provided out of the box. The backend issues JWTs that encode role‑based permissions, allowing fine‑grained access control on boards and projects.

• CRUD for all hierarchy levels: Projects → Boards → Lists → Cards → Tasks. Each entity exposes a REST endpoint (/api/projects, /api/boards/:id/...) and GraphQL mutations for bulk operations.
• Webhooks: Developers can subscribe to events such as cardMoved, taskCompleted, or boardCreated. The webhook payloads are JSON‑encoded and signed with HMAC for verification.
• Export/Import: Boards can be exported as JSON or CSV, enabling backup or migration to other systems. The import API accepts the same payloads, allowing automated provisioning of boards via CI/CD pipelines.
• Markdown Rendering: The API returns a parsed HTML string for card descriptions, ensuring consistent rendering across clients.
• Search & Filtering: Full‑text search is powered by PostgreSQL’s tsvector, and the API exposes query parameters (?search=...&status=open) for fine‑grained filtering.

4ga Boards is designed to run in any Docker‑capable environment. The official Compose file pulls two images: rargames/4gaboards (the application) and postgres. For Kubernetes, Helm charts are provided that expose configurable resource limits, persistent volumes, and optional external PostgreSQL connections. The app requires minimal memory (≈200 MiB) and CPU, making it suitable for small teams or hobby projects on a Raspberry Pi. For larger deployments, the backend can be scaled horizontally behind an NGINX ingress that terminates TLS and balances WebSocket connections.

The plugin system is still in early stages but already exposes a simple hook API. Developers can write Node.js modules that listen to lifecycle events (onCardCreate, onTaskUpdate) and register them via a JSON config. The SDK also offers a WebSocket event emitter, enabling custom front‑end extensions such as real‑time analytics dashboards. Additionally, the upcoming GitHub 2‑way sync feature will allow boards to mirror issue trackers, opening opportunities for continuous integration pipelines that update board state based on commit messages or PR statuses.

Documentation is split into an online portal (docs.4gaboards.com) and a GitHub wiki, covering API reference, deployment guides, and best‑practice tutorials. The community is active on GitHub Discussions, where contributors submit feature requests and bug reports. Licensing is permissive (MIT), encouraging internal use without commercial restrictions. The codebase follows standard TypeScript linting rules and includes unit tests for critical paths, giving developers confidence in the platform’s stability.

• Agile Teams: Small to medium teams can host 4ga Boards on a shared server, using the API to integrate with CI/CD tools that auto‑create cards from GitHub issues.
• Project Portfolios: Organizations can expose a read‑only API to external stakeholders, allowing dashboards that visualize progress across multiple projects.
• Education: Instructors can deploy a self‑hosted instance for students to practice Kanban workflows, leveraging the import/export feature for assignment templates.

• Performance: The combination of Prisma and Redis caching keeps API latency low, even under concurrent WebSocket traffic.
• Flexibility: The modular architecture lets developers swap out the front‑end or replace PostgreSQL with a compatible database without breaking the API contract.
• Licensing: MIT license eliminates vendor lock‑in, enabling full control over the codebase.
• Scalability: Docker Compose for single‑node deployments and Helm charts for multi‑node clusters cover the entire spectrum of deployment scenarios.

In summary, 4ga Boards offers a developer‑friendly, extensible platform for real‑time task management that can be fully self‑hosted and integrated