strewboard GitHub

The whiteboard you host yourself

strewboard is an open-source, real-time board for sticky notes, diagrams and meetings. Every move you make on it is also a tool an AI agent in your browser can call.

Get it on GitHub
Team retro 60%
Book the room for the March offsite
Standup runs long on Mondays
Try dot voting on Friday

WebMCP calls

  1. create_item({ type: "sticky", x: 53, y: 47 })

The same tools are registered on this page. An agent with WebMCP can move these notes too.

A wall covered edge to edge in yellow, pink, green and white paper notes.

A wall only works for the room

Paper notes are quick, and they stay where they were stuck. strewboard keeps that looseness: notes land where you drop them, at an angle if you like. The difference is that the wall is on every screen at once, with everyone's cursor on it.

A team member draws a project timeline on a whiteboard while a colleague watches; three more people follow on a video call.
The Media Viewer launch retrospective at the Wikimedia Foundation, April 2014: the timeline is on the wall, three colleagues are on the call.

Remote colleagues see the wall through a webcam. On strewboard they hold a pen.

The timer is shared

Start it and it counts down on every screen on the board. The presence server keeps it, so a reload doesn't reset it. Dot votes, raised hands and follow-me work the same way.

Board timer 5:00

Every button is a tool

strewboard has 77 commands. Each is a control for you and a WebMCP tool for an agent in the same tab, built from one registry, so the two can never drift apart.

  • Add a sticky note S Drops a note where you click; an agent calls create_item with a position and text.
  • Connect two items C An arrow that keeps both ends attached when either item moves: create_connector.
  • Frame a group F A titled area that carries everything inside it when you move it: frame_items.
  • Find on the board ⌘F Searches every note, shape and frame title, and replaces text in one undoable step: find_items, replace_text.
  • Start a dot vote Each person gets a set number of votes to spend on notes, and the result is counted for everyone: start_vote.
  • Import a Mermaid diagram Paste a flowchart written in Mermaid and get real shapes and arrows you can edit: import_mermaid.
  • Save a version A named snapshot of the whole board you can go back to later: save_version.
  • Undo ⌘Z Takes back your last change, never someone else's: undo.

First, everyone is in sync

Every change is written to Postgres and streamed to each open tab within a moment.

Synced

  1. set_item_textsent
  2. move_itemssent

Five containers, one compose file

Rows of rack servers with blue status lights in a server room.

Services

The services in docker-compose.yml
Edge caddy TLS, HTTP/3, headers
Data postgres 18.6 every board, every item
Sync electric 1.8.1 streams rows to each tab
App app writes, sign-in, sharing
Live presence cursors, timer, votes
Jobs migrate, backup schema, nightly dump

You need a server with Docker, a domain and an SMTP account for sign-in emails. Guests join through a share link without an account.

Questions

  • Nothing. All of it is MIT-licensed, with no paid tier and no limit on boards or people. You pay for your own server.
  • In a browser with WebMCP, the open board offers its commands as tools. An assistant can read the notes, sort them into frames or draw a diagram, and you watch it happen and undo it.
  • No. A share link lets anyone view or edit as a guest. Members sign in with a link sent by email, and a guest who signs up keeps their boards.
  • They wait in the tab and are sent when the connection returns. Each carries a key, so a write that is retried is still applied only once.
  • Yes. Export a board as PNG, SVG or a JSON file another strewboard can import, and flowcharts as Mermaid. The database is yours, with daily dumps.
  • Not yet. strewboard runs in any current browser, on a laptop, a tablet or a phone.

Run it at yourself

Copies the three commands that start strewboard on a server with Docker, your domain already in them. 

git clone https://github.com/strewboard/strewboard && cd strewboard
cp .env.example .env   # set STREWBOARD_DOMAIN=board.example.org, the passwords, SMTP_URL
docker compose up -d