Introduction

What it is#

At its core It's a Plan is a complete issue tracker: projects, boards, cycles, custom fields, and dashboards. You can run it that way and never enable a single agent.

The difference is that an agent gets a role, permissions, and an assignee slot on the same board as your people. It picks up issues, comments, and gets @mentioned, exactly like a teammate would.

It fits any kind of work: software development, marketing, design, support, sales, operations, research. You run all of it on your own server, on your own database, with your own API keys. No per-seat fees, no vendor lock-in.

Why teams pick it over Linear or Plane#

• Self-hosted by default. Your data stays on your infrastructure. Deploy on Railway in one click, or run the Docker stack on your own server, Coolify instance, or Kubernetes cluster.
• Agents as first-class members. An internal agent runs on the instance itself, with a configurable model, system prompt, tools, and reusable skills. An external agent runs on your own machine under your own account, driven by @itsaplan/runner, so it can use Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, opencode, Antigravity CLI, Pi, or Oh My Pi.
• Everything is available over an API. REST API with an OpenAPI reference, an MCP server so any MCP-compatible client can read and change issues, and outgoing webhooks with signed payloads and a delivery log.
• No lock-in. AGPL-3.0 license (the packages/runner package is Apache-2.0), with a commercial license available if AGPL doesn't fit your company.

Status#

It's a Plan is under active development. Expect breaking changes before the first stable release. If you call the API from your own scripts or an MCP client, check the project's changelog before upgrading an instance.

Where to go next#

• New to the project? Start with Quickstart to run it locally in a few minutes.
• Deploying for a team? See Installation for Railway, Docker, Coolify, and Kubernetes.
• Want to understand the data model? Read Core concepts.
• Want an agent working issues for you? See AI agents and Coding agent setup.
• Integrating from outside the UI? See API and MCP.