Digitize neighborhood circulars | Jag Kairanban-app
Circulars, hall reservations and meeting RSVPs on your members' smartphones.
Register by email and open the guide (Japanese)
For people introducing digital circulars in their neighborhood association, Jag Kairanban-app is a digital circular-board app. This page explains its features and the preparation needed for setup.
Jag Kairanban-app is a circular-board app that neighborhood associations set up and use for their own association.
Members can read notices on their smartphones without waiting for a paper circular. They can check hall availability, reserve the hall and reply to meetings.
You, the person introducing this system, follow the guide to set up your association's app.
What officers and members can do
- Officers distribute circulars and check who has read them.
- Officers accept hall reservations and collect meeting RSVPs and attendance counts.
- Officers and members share rules and minutes. Only members can read photos and blogs.
- Jag Kairanban-app provides instructions in Japanese, Easy Japanese, English, Chinese and Vietnamese.
Set up the app for your association
You set up the app in this order:
- Prepare a Mac or Windows computer, Node.js 20 or later and a Cloudflare account. On Windows, you also need git.
- Download and extract the public repository ZIP. You can also retrieve it with git.
- Answer the questions in the browser, save the settings and run セットアップ.command or セットアップ.bat inside the extracted folder (kairanban-app-main). The saved settings are downloaded to your Downloads folder.
- Check the settings and deployment steps, then enter your association information and start using the app.
The questions open in your browser, but setup does not finish in the browser alone. You must run setup on your computer. We do not guarantee setup time or continuing operation.
Costs and preparation
- Jag Kairanban-app code is MIT-licensed.
- Your association can operate from JPY 0 per month within the Cloudflare free tier (as of September 2026). Exceeding the free tier can incur costs for your association.
- You do not need a paid AI subscription for setup and operation.
- For your association to send email from the app, you need a Resend account and your own domain.
Check before adoption
- Jag Kairanban-app is not a packaged service. It is open source under continuing improvement. We do not provide support or an operating warranty. The association that adopts it is responsible for operation and personal data.
- Current login uses only a phone number, without a password. Someone who knows a member's number can impersonate that member. Your association should not put sensitive personal information in the app.
- Anyone can read the body of a circular set to public. Smartphone lock-screen notifications may show names or circular titles. Only members can read photos and blogs.
The public app and guide registration are separate
We do not require registration for the app or its MIT-licensed public code. Email registration is required only for the setup guide (wizard).
Registration conditions
You agree to the terms and register your email address, and then you can open the guide immediately.
As a condition of free use, you agree to receive our newsletters about tool updates, new tools, and our services, and email contact about the guide. You can unsubscribe using the instructions at the end of each newsletter. You can still use the guide after unsubscribing.
Registration steps
- Read the EULA to the bottom of its scrollable area to enable registration.
- Enter your email address (required) and name (optional).
- Choose "Agree to the terms and register"（利用規約（EULA）に同意して登録する）. The registration screen is in Japanese. The guide opens immediately.
About the maker
Jag Kairanban-app is made and published by Jag Project, LLC, based in Koto-ku, Tokyo.
Our representative, Jag Yamamoto, teaches behavioral economics as a part-time lecturer at Musashino Art University. Since 2020, he has taught the graduate course "Practical Social Theory for Innovation". After roles including CEO of the Japanese subsidiary of G DATA Software, he established our company in 2015.
Why Jag Project publishes free tools
We turn needs that do not yet have a name into revenue-generating businesses. We support business planning and B2B marketing on commission.
We publish tools for free that we built for practical work and have used ourselves. There are two reasons:
- To help neighborhood associations, small shops and companies continue their own communication and operations without spending money.
- To let you examine our thinking and technology through actual working tools.
We design every tool by observing where people actually become confused and where they stop. This is the approach of behavioral economics.
Jag Yamamoto biography / Business planning and marketing consultation
Source and related materials
GitHub / MIT / Jag ProjectFrequently asked questions about introducing the app
How can we send neighborhood association notices to older members who do not use LINE?
One option is to deliver circulars as smartphone notifications and show the number of unread items on the home-screen icon. Jag Kairanban-app guides members through adding the app to their home screen to receive notifications, keeping photos of what to tap visible at the top of the screen throughout the process. Members log in using only their phone number, without a password. No App Store or Google Play account is required. The same notices can also be sent by email (setting up a custom domain is required). There is no feature for members to connect directly one-to-one, so they do not need to share contact details with one another.
How can association officers check whether a circular has been read?
For each circular, the app automatically keeps a list of individual members who have selected "I've read this"（確認しました）. Unread notices and outstanding tasks are brought together in a single view in the admin dashboard. For meeting RSVPs, officers can send a notice to everyone who has not yet responded.
How can we provide foreign residents with waste disposal and disaster preparedness information?
Write in Japanese in the admin dashboard and select "Update translations"（翻訳を更新） to automatically add translations in Easy Japanese, English, Chinese and Vietnamese. These are automatic AI translations. During development, an AI translation actually replaced a place name with the name of a real location elsewhere. Because changing the destination in disaster guidance can cause real harm, the initial setup includes a field for a glossary of place-name translations, covering names such as the association and its hall. Check translated place names and waste collection dates against the municipality's official website.
How can a neighborhood association introduce a digital circular-board app without monthly fees?
At the scale of a typical neighborhood association, both the app and server hosting for Jag Kairanban-app cost JPY 0. Because there is no monthly service fee, grant funding is used only for one-off activities such as initial training sessions, rather than leaving the association with additional ongoing service fees to cover from the following year.
Can a neighborhood association set up the app itself even if no one is particularly familiar with computers?
When you enter the association's name and the location of its hall, the setup wizard creates configuration files and instructions. No AI subscription is required. You must install the free tools on your own computer and create a free account with the app's hosting provider yourself. There is no support desk. If you run into difficulties, questions and reports can be submitted through GitHub Issues, which is public, but replies may take time. The wizard is available free of charge after you register your email address on Jag Utilities, Jag Project's tools portal.
About Jag Project
We turn needs that do not yet have a name into revenue-generating businesses. We support business planning and B2B marketing on commission.