bd - Beads

Distributed graph issue tracker for AI agents, powered by Dolt.

Platforms: macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD

Docs: https://beads.gascity.com/

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.

flowchart LR
    create["bd create  
new bead"] --> depgraph["dependency  
graph"]
    depgraph --> ready["bd ready  
claimable work"]
    ready --> claim["bd update --claim  
agent takes it"]
    claim --> close["bd close  
work done"]
    close -->|blockers released| ready
    depgraph <-->|"bd dolt push / pull"| remote[("other machines  
and agents")]

⚡ Quick Start

# Install beads CLI (system-wide - don't clone this repo into your project)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gastownhall/beads/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

# Initialize in YOUR project
cd your-project
bd init

# Optional: refresh or install richer instructions for your agent
bd setup codex    # Codex CLI - installs skill, AGENTS.md guidance, and hooks
bd setup claude   # Claude Code - installs hooks/settings
bd setup factory  # Factory.ai Droid - creates/updates AGENTS.md

Note: Beads is a CLI tool you install once and use everywhere. You don't need to clone this repository into your project.

bd init creates or updates AGENTS.md by default so agents can discover the beads workflow, and also installs the project Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor integrations unless you pass --skip-agents or --stealth. Use bd setup --list to see supported integrations, including bd setup codex, bd setup factory, bd setup claude, bd setup mux, bd setup cursor, and more. See Agent and IDE setup.

Manual copy-paste is only for unsupported agents, existing projects where you cannot rerun bd init/bd setup, or custom instruction files. In those cases, run bd onboard and paste the printed snippet into the file your agent reads.

If your agent is not covered by bd setup, add this minimal AGENTS.md section:

This project uses bd (beads) for issue tracking.

- Run `bd prime` for workflow context and command guidance.
- Use `bd ready`, `bd show `, `bd update  --claim`, and `bd close `.
- Use `bd remember "insight"` for durable project facts; keep per-operator preferences in your harness's own memory.
- Do not use markdown TODO lists for task tracking.

🛠 Features

• Dolt-Powered: Version-controlled SQL database with cell-level merge, native branching, and built-in sync via Dolt remotes.
• 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.
• Compaction: Semantic "memory decay" summarizes old closed tasks to save context window.
• Messaging: Message issue type with threading (--thread), ephemeral lifecycle, and mail delegation.
• Graph Links: relates-to, duplicates, supersedes, and replies-to for knowledge graphs.

📖 Essential Commands

🔗 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. See Git-Free Usage below.

Contributor vs Maintainer: When working on open-source projects:

• Contributors (forked repos): Run bd init --contributor to route planning issues to a separate repo (e.g., ~/.beads-planning). Keeps experimental work out of PRs.
• Maintainers (write access): Beads auto-detects maintainer role via SSH URLs or HTTPS with credentials. Only need git config beads.role maintainer if using GitHub HTTPS without credentials but you have write access.

📦 Installation

brew install beads           # macOS / Linux (recommended)
npm install -g @beads/bd     # Node.js users

Other methods: install script | go install | from source | Windows | Arch AUR

Requirements: macOS, Linux, Windows, or FreeBSD. See docs/getting-started/installation.md for complete installation guide.

Upgrading? Replacing the binary is not always the whole story. Short version: sync remote-backed databases with your current bd, back up with bd export --all, upgrade the binary, then run bd info --whats-new, bd hooks install, and bd version. If the upgrade crosses a schema migration on a remote-backed database, exactly one designated clone runs bd migrate schema and bd dolt push; other clones install the new binary and run bd bootstrap. See the full upgrade guide or docs/getting-started/installation.md.

Security And Verification

Before trusting any downloaded binary, verify its checksum against the release checksums.txt.

The install scripts verify release checksums before install. For manual installs, do this verification yourself before first run.

On macOS, scripts/install.sh preserves the downloaded signature by default. Local ad-hoc re-signing is explicit opt-in via BEADS_INSTALL_RESIGN_MACOS=1.

See docs/reference/antivirus.md for Windows AV false-positive guidance and verification workflow.

💾 Storage Modes

Beads uses Dolt as its database. Two modes:

• Embedded (default) — bd init. Dolt runs in-process, data lives in .beads/embeddeddolt/, single writer. Recommended for most users.
• Server — bd init --server. Connects to an external dolt sql-server for multiple concurrent writers; data lives in .beads/dolt/.

Cross-machine sync uses bd dolt push / bd dolt pull against refs/dolt/data on your git remote; .beads/issues.jsonl is an export for viewers and interchange, not the source of truth or a backup. Back up and migrate between modes with bd backup; reclaim space with bd prune / bd purge.

Full detail — connection flags, sockets, maintenance, backup, and migration — in the Dolt backend guide.

Schema Version Guard

bd checks the database schema version at open time. If the database has been migrated by a newer binary and an older binary tries to open it, bd exits with an actionable error rather than issuing queries that fail with cryptic SQL errors:

schema version mismatch: database is at v45, binary knows up to v42 (3 migrations ahead)

  Your bd binary is stale. Queries for dropped or renamed columns will fail
  with cryptic SQL errors (e.g. "column X could not be found in any table in scope").

  Rebuild from main:
    CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -tags gms_pure_go ./cmd/bd

  Or install the latest release:
    CGO_ENABLED=0 go install -tags gms_pure_go github.com/steveyegge/beads/cmd/bd@latest

  To proceed despite the risk (some read commands may still work):
    BD_IGNORE_SCHEMA_SKEW=1 bd 
    bd --ignore-schema-skew 

When this fires: only when the database schema is ahead of the binary (a newer binary migrated the database; this binary doesn't know those migrations). Normal upgrades, where the binary migrates the database forward, are unaffected.

Escape hatch: BD_IGNORE_SCHEMA_SKEW=1 (or --ignore-schema-skew) bypasses the guard with a warning on stderr. Use this only if you know the forward migrations are additive and safe for your specific workload.

🔌 HTTP Backend (experimental)

A workspace can also talk to a remote bd serve over HTTP instead of opening a local Dolt database — useful for a thin client against a shared server, or for embedding beads in another program as a library.

# Point this workspace at a server (verifies the server first; writes nothing on failure)
bd connect https://bd.example.com --expect-project-id my-project

# The everyday commands work the same way: create, show, list, update, close,
# dependencies (including `bd dep tree`), comments, ready/count queries, and
# batch apply all round-trip over the wire with the same semantics as a local
# database. So does `bd ready --claim`, except against an older server or while
# any issue holds an unsatisfied external ref: then it lists and claims in two
# steps rather than one transaction (ledger row L14, linked below).
bd create "Fix auth bug" -p 1 -t bug
bd ready --json
bd close bd-a1b2 "Fixed"

# Loopback needs no TLS
bd connect http://127.0.0.1:8080

# Forget the server and restore this workspace's previous backend selection
bd connect --clear

HTTP mode is not a byte-for-byte mirror of local mode, though: some operations are knowingly refused (the wire has no way to express them) or degrade to a different-but-not-misreadable behavior (for example, a few unbounded listing shapes lose single-query snapshot isolation and instead walk the server page by page). Every one of these is a deliberate, tested row, never a silent gap — see engdocs/design/http-divergence-ledger.md for the full, generated list of what differs and why before depending on an HTTP-backed workspace for a workflow you haven't checked against it. One refusal to know up front: bd close --claim-next closes nothing over HTTP, because the wire's batch close cannot carry the claim. Close without it, then run bd ready --claim.

Cross-repo dependencies keep their policy over HTTP. The client resolves each external: reference against its own external_projects configuration. bd dep tree shows the reference as a leaf, and while it is unsatisfied the issue stays out of bd ready and bd ready --claim, and bd close refuses it without --force. A server that advertises enforcing that policy itself is trusted to do so instead.

Three CLI-level differences are worth knowing up front:

• IDs resolve exactly: an abbreviated id is not expanded (the wire has no substring search), and a missing id is reported as not found after one lookup.
• bd update -s closed does not record closed_by_session (from --session or CLAUDE_SESSION_ID), because the wire's update cannot carry it; the close itself happens as usual. bd close does record the session. bd reopen's history entry carries the server's own label.
• Contributor auto-routing (routing.* settings) is read from local config.yaml / environment only, never from the server's settings: its targets are local paths.

bd connect writes two things on success: .beads/metadata.json gets "backend": "http", and a per-user, never-git-tracked sidecar (.beads/http_target.json) records the server URL and pinned project id. It never writes a credential to disk. A bearer credential, if the server requires one, comes from BEADS_HTTP_TOKEN=host[:port]=, then BEADS_HTTP_TOKEN_COMMAND=host[:port]= (a helper that prints a token), then the credentials file, then no credential at all. Both variables must name the server they are for (a pattern without a port matches that host on any port); a bare value is refused, because it would be sent to whatever server the workspace's http_target.json names. Connecting to a non-loopback server over plain http:// is refused by default (a bearer credential would cross the network unencrypted) — pass --allow-plaintext to override, or use https://. Switching a workspace that already selects a different backend needs --force.

An embedding program that links beads as a library rather than running cmd/bd registers this backend itself through the public backend/http package (bdhttp.Register), and can open a workspace with a credential scoped to one caller via beads.OpenBestAvailableWith — see that package's doc comment for the multi-tenant case. This surface is EXPERIMENTAL: pin an exact beads version.

🌐 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.

See docs/related-projects.md for adjacent or complementary projects that solve different problems in the same neighborhood.

🚀 Git-Free Usage

Beads works without git. The Dolt database is the storage backend — git integration (hooks, repo discovery, identity) is optional.

# Initialize without git
export BEADS_DIR=/path/to/your/project/.beads
bd init --quiet --stealth

# All core commands work with zero git calls
bd create "Fix auth bug" -p 1 -t bug
bd ready --json
bd update bd-a1b2 --claim
bd prime
bd close bd-a1b2 "Fixed"

BEADS_DIR tells bd where to put the .beads/ database directory, bypassing git repo discovery. --stealth sets no-git-ops: true in config, disabling all git hook installation and git operations.

This is useful for:

• Non-git VCS (Sapling, Jujutsu, Piper) — no .git/ directory needed
• Monorepos — point BEADS_DIR at a specific subdirectory
• CI/CD — isolated task tracking without repo-level side effects
• Evaluation/testing — ephemeral databases in /tmp

📝 Documentation

• Documentation site | Installing | Sync Concepts | Agent Setup | Copilot CLI Setup | Copilot VS Code MCP | Articles | Sync Branch Mode | Troubleshooting | FAQ
• Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md (Bazel builds and tests beads: install Bazelisk, then make test) | Roadmap | Contributor agent instructions
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