gastownhall/beads
Beads - A memory upgrade for your coding agent
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SDKs, agent skills, IDE extensions, and reference pipelines from Backblaze Labs. All open source.
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Use Cases & Benefits
- Beads is a distributed, git-backed graph issue tracker designed to provide persistent, structured memory for AI coding agents.
- Key features include git-based JSONL storage, dependency tracking, zero conflict hash IDs, SQLite caching, and semantic memory compaction.
- Strengths are multi-agent support, long-horizon task handling, and seamless version control; limitation includes dependency on specific OS environments.
- Organizations can use Beads to manage complex AI agent workflows with hierarchical task tracking and conflict-free multi-branch collaboration in production.
- Ideal use cases involve AI-driven coding projects requiring persistent context, task dependency management, and scalable multi-agent coordination.
About beads
bd - Beads
Distributed, git-backed graph issue tracker for AI agents.
Beads provides a persistent, structured memory for coding agents. It replaces messy markdown plans with a dependency-aware graph, allowing agents to handle long-horizon tasks without losing context.
⚡ Quick Start
# Install (macOS/Linux/FreeBSD)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/steveyegge/beads/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
# Initialize (Humans run this once)
bd init
# Tell your agent
echo "Use 'bd' for task tracking" >> AGENTS.md
🛠 Features
- Git as Database: Issues stored as JSONL in
.beads/. Versioned, branched, and merged like code. - Agent-Optimized: JSON output, dependency tracking, and auto-ready task detection.
- Zero Conflict: Hash-based IDs (
bd-a1b2) prevent merge collisions in multi-agent/multi-branch workflows. - Invisible Infrastructure: SQLite local cache for speed; background daemon for auto-sync.
- Compaction: Semantic "memory decay" summarizes old closed tasks to save context window.
📖 Essential Commands
| Command | Action |
|---|---|
bd ready | List tasks with no open blockers. |
bd create "Title" -p 0 | Create a P0 task. |
bd dep add <child> <parent> | Link tasks (blocks, related, parent-child). |
bd show <id> | View task details and audit trail. |
🔗 Hierarchy & Workflow
Beads supports hierarchical IDs for epics:
bd-a3f8(Epic)bd-a3f8.1(Task)bd-a3f8.1.1(Sub-task)
Stealth Mode: Run bd init --stealth to use Beads locally without committing files to the main repo. Perfect for personal use on shared projects.
📦 Installation
- npm:
npm install -g @beads/bd - Homebrew:
brew install steveyegge/beads/bd - Go:
go install github.com/steveyegge/beads/cmd/bd@latest
Requirements: Linux (glibc 2.32+), FreeBSD, macOS, or Windows.
🌐 Community Tools
See docs/COMMUNITY_TOOLS.md for a curated list of community-built UIs, extensions, and integrations—including terminal interfaces, web UIs, editor extensions, and native apps.
📝 Documentation
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