Working with an AI assistant

Ask your assistant for the tasks a human has to do, and tell it to emit a JSON array with Title, Description, List, Labels and a stable Task ID. Paste that into the import box and the cards land in Backlog. To catch the assistant up later, use Export for AI and paste the result back.

By James Folk, who built this Power-Up. Last reviewed August 2026.

An assistant can do a great deal of the work and then hit things it cannot finish: a password only you have, a decision only you can make, a form that wants a human signature. Those tasks are easy to lose track of, because they are scattered through a conversation rather than written down anywhere.

This turns that conversation into a board, and the board back into something the assistant can read.

Ask for the tasks

Paste this into Claude, Codex or whatever you are using, at the point where you want the leftovers written down.

List every task from our work so far that I have to do myself, because you
cannot do it, should not do it, or need an answer from me first.

Return ONLY a JSON array, no prose around it. One object per task, with
exactly these keys:

  "Task ID"      a short stable slug you invent, lowercase with dashes
  "Title"        the task in one imperative line
  "Description"  why it needs me, and what finished looks like
  "List"         always "Backlog"
  "Labels"       one of: needs-human, needs-decision, needs-credentials, needs-review
  "Checklist"    the steps, separated by | characters

Keep the Task ID the same whenever you refer to that task again.

What comes back looks like this.

[
  {
    "Task ID": "rotate-stripe-webhook-secret",
    "Title": "Rotate the Stripe webhook secret",
    "Description": "Needs the live dashboard, which I cannot sign in to. Done when the new secret is in .env and a test event verifies.",
    "List": "Backlog",
    "Labels": "needs-credentials",
    "Checklist": "Generate a new secret|Update .env|Redeploy|Send a test event"
  }
]

Put it on the board

Click Import in the board header.
Paste the JSON straight into the box. No file and no saving first.
Leave Create the kanban columns ticked on a fresh board, which creates Backlog, Ready, In Progress, In Review and Done in that order.
Check the column mapping and import.

Every card is stamped with its Task ID as it is created. That stamp is what the export reads later, and it is why renaming a card on the board does not break anything.

If your assistant forgets the Task ID key, nothing is lost. An id is worked out from the title, and the export will show you what it chose.

Let the assistant read and move the cards itself

If you use Claude Code, Codex, Claude Desktop, Cursor or anything else that speaks MCP, the assistant can read the board and move cards on it. You never paste anything, and you can close the loop by telling it what you finished.

Get a token. This link asks Trello for access for Kanban Importer and hands you one to paste:

<https://trello.com/1/authorize?expiration=never&scope=read,write&response_type=token&key=d942028fe402246748954673a8420ed1&name=Kanban%20Importer>

Then set the server up in whichever assistant you use. Pick yours below; each one is a single copy.

Claude Code

One command, from any directory. The --scope user part makes it available in every project rather than only this one.

claude mcp add kanban-importer --scope user --env TRELLO_TOKEN=paste-your-token -- npx -y @njligames/kanban-importer-mcp

Check it took with claude mcp list. You should see kanban-importer.

Codex

Also one command.

codex mcp add kanban-importer --env TRELLO_TOKEN=paste-your-token -- npx -y @njligames/kanban-importer-mcp

If you would rather edit the file, it is ~/.codex/config.toml, and the entry is TOML rather than JSON:

[mcp_servers.kanban-importer]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@njligames/kanban-importer-mcp"]
env = { TRELLO_TOKEN = "paste-your-token" }

Claude Desktop

Open Settings, then Developer, then Edit Config. That opens claude_desktop_config.json, which lives at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on a Mac and %APPDATA%\Claude\ on Windows.

Add the kanban-importer block inside mcpServers. If the file is empty, paste the whole thing:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kanban-importer": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@njligames/kanban-importer-mcp"],
      "env": { "TRELLO_TOKEN": "paste-your-token" }
    }
  }
}

Quit Claude Desktop completely and reopen it. Closing the window is not enough on a Mac; it has to actually quit.

Cursor

Create or edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json inside one project. Same shape as Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kanban-importer": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@njligames/kanban-importer-mcp"],
      "env": { "TRELLO_TOKEN": "paste-your-token" }
    }
  }
}

If it does not appear

The first run downloads the package, which can take longer than the client's startup timeout and shows up as the server failing rather than being slow. Run it once by hand to warm the cache, then restart your client:

npx -y @njligames/kanban-importer-mcp

It will print a line about TRELLO_TOKEN and exit, which is the correct behaviour with no token set. That is enough to prove the download worked.

That is the whole setup. It gives the assistant three things it can do:

Tool
`list_boards`	The boards on your account, by name
`list_tasks`	Every tagged task and the column it is in
`move_task`	Move one task to a named column

Asking how things stand

Read my Trello board and tell me which of the tasks you gave me are done,
which are in progress, and what is now unblocked for you.

It matches on the task id it invented, not on the card title, so renaming a card or adding a note to it changes nothing.

Telling it what you finished

I rotated the Stripe webhook secret and signed the lease. Move those to Done,
and move the DNS one to In Progress because I have started it.

It moves the cards. A task you had archived comes back when it is moved, which is what people mean by moving something back to In Progress.

The server will not create or delete cards. Importing is what the Power-Up is for, with a preview you can check first, and nothing an assistant does here can remove work from your board.

Other Trello MCP servers exist and can read these boards too, because the task id is written into each card's description. They speak in Trello card ids rather than task ids, so an assistant has more guessing to do, but nothing stops you using one.

Or hand the status back by hand

In a plain chat window with no MCP, there is nothing reading your board, so the export is the way across.

Work the board normally. Drag cards, tick checklist items, archive what is done.

When you want the assistant caught up, click Export for AI in the board header and then Copy. Paste that into the chat.

That button appears once a board has tagged cards on it, so you will not see it until your first tagged import has finished. On a board you imported into before this existed, the cards carry no tags, so import the list again with tagging ticked and the button arrives with it.

{
  "board": "Launch prep",
  "exported": "2026-10-22T14:03:00Z",
  "columns": ["Backlog", "Ready", "In Progress", "In Review", "Done"],
  "tasks": [
    {
      "Task ID": "rotate-stripe-webhook-secret",
      "Title": "Rotate the Stripe webhook secret",
      "List": "In Progress",
      "Archived": false,
      "Checklist": { "done": 2, "total": 4 }
    }
  ]
}

A prompt that reads it well:

Here is the current state of the board. The "columns" array is in order from
first to last, so a task's "List" tells you how far along it is. Archived
means I closed it out.

Tell me what is now unblocked for you, and which tasks you are still waiting
on me for.

The columns array is there instead of a status field on each task. Your board might not use our column names, and a guess about what "Shipped" or "Icebox" means would be a confident wrong answer. Giving the real order lets the assistant work it out.

What leaves your machine

Nothing new from us. The import runs in your browser and talks only to Trello, as it always has. The export is built in the browser too, and goes to your clipboard. Whatever you then paste into a chat window is your choice, and it carries card titles, columns and checklist counts, not card descriptions or comments.

Kanban Importer has no server, stores nothing, and never sees a Trello token of yours beyond the one Trello itself holds for the Power-Up. If you take the MCP route above, that is an arrangement between you, your assistant and Trello, and we are not in the middle of it.