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gastownhall
beads
Go2025–2026
gastownhall / beads

beads

Beads - A memory upgrade for your coding agent

AI & Machine Learning
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
47Distinct people
55Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
28.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Beads - A memory upgrade for your coding agent

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I looked into beads but I didn't see a way to make it work any better than fossil, and fossil does more stuff. My typical setup is to use the repo as a working directory, the…

zhynn used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month55 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2025-10-13 09:22:47 UTC to 2026-10-26 13:42:54 UTC.

02468102025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 4 submissions, 3 commentsOct 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 2 submissions, 6 comments2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 5 submissions, 4 comments2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 commentsApr 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsOct 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Oct 20252025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC743
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC826
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
Feb 20262026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC954
Mar 20262026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC514
Apr 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC321
May 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20262026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jul 20262026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Aug 20262026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20262026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Oct 20262026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

55 sources
gosugdr·Oct 26, 2026
Better to keep tasks in a separate repo imo, or at least make sure they aren't committed. I always follow one rule: looking at the git history should tell me what each change did, and the commit message alone should be enough to understand what actually changed. If you mix tasks with code changes, you will just confuse your future self. Moreover, you can set up something like beads to handle task delegation and status updates for your agents. https://github.com/gastownhall/beads
In Tasks as Code: Move Your Tickets into the Repository
zhynn·Oct 4, 2026Recommendation phrase
I looked into beads but I didn't see a way to make it work any better than fossil, and fossil does more stuff. My typical setup is to use the repo as a working directory, the tickets for todo, wiki/forum for conversation. There is also a chat interface, but I haven't tried that with agents yet. But I love fossil for this. You can create users for all of the agents (or agent roles). The CLI for fossil is just a binary and it compiles nearly everywhere. +1 over here for agentic fossil. With fossil the "work" is integrated in with the code. Beads separates this out, the beads are instances of work that agents can consume, and they aren't part of the work repo. I could see why you might want this, but I still think that fossil gives you more utility. More info on beads if you are curious: https://github.com/gastownhall/beads
In We want you to build the next Git platform on Cloudflare
oefrha·Sep 9, 2026
Sounds like https://github.com/gastownhall/beads to me. I prefer working solo, single-threaded on components to stay on top of agentic work, so it didn’t end up being a force multiplier for my workflows (and actually kinda got in the way from time to time due to me rebasing too much), but I can see its value when you have many agents working simultaneously.
In An Accidental Blackboard
xeonax·Jul 21, 2026Submission

Show HN: Aeon.WorX – A generic object lifecycle management system (like PLM/PDM)

Hi All, In the past I used to make games as an hobby. I wanted do something different this time. After having spent ~10Y working on SmarTeam, ENOVIA and 3DExperience Platform. And recently using Azure Devops and Salesforce. Seeing all the complexity, engineering that went into it, I was itching to create something similar of my own. Now that we have LLM assisted coding, big projects should be doable by a single person, right? This is my attempt (v0) doing the same. 1.9B Tokens and 28 Dollares Later, We have a working demo. Since this was a big endeavour, I wanted to have structured knowledge base. Discussion with various LLMs suggested (OpenSpec)[https://openspec.dev/] is a good way to store this info and make changes to it. LLMs also suggested that I track workitems using (beads)[https://github.com/gastownhall/beads] I initially modeled
Read the rest
the RFLP (Requirements, Functional, Logical, Physical) framework from my early days of working on 3Dx. But I didn't have much sample data to seed. 3 days ago I had an Idea, what if I modeled the beads, openspec and git commits into it? it worked. I have seeded the demo with its own development history. I used VSCode, Deepseek via Copilot harness in VSCode, .NETCore + Sqlite Stack. ASPNET Razorpages + HTMX and Tabler UI Looking to hear your thoughts and questions. Cheers!!
2 points · Open discussion
mytechtoday·Apr 26, 2026Submission

Show HN: OO – Automated O&O Shut-Up for Windows

Why use Windows? Well, some people do. Why let Microsoft spy on your content? Why indeed? So, O&O Shut-Up (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10) claims to cut the connection and telemetry between you and Microsoft. However, when Microsoft updates your computer, the settings are reset, and you have to run O&O ShutUp again. Why not run OO which installs PowerShell 7+ if not installed, O&O Shutup, then it makes a scheduled tasks that runs the default settings after every Microsoft update? Why futz around with re-running anything? Just run OO once, and forget it. Please file any bugs if you find them. This isn't really going anywhere except to help internet users and my clients. Hope it's helpful PS - All of it generated with VS Code, Augmentcode AI (https://www.augmentcode.com/), OpenSpec (https://github.com/Fission-AI/OpenSpec), and
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beads (https://github.com/gastownhall/beads).
1 points · Open discussion
mytechtoday·Apr 26, 2026Submission

Show HN: MTTCleaner – Same as CCleaner but free, no ads

I'm an IT consultant. CCleaner was a good choice to speed up clients' web browsing experience. Unless you paid, it keeps vomiting ads for the product. Which made it a bad choice. mTTCleaner does most of the same thing to clean most browsers by cleaning caches, compacting databases, and removing unnecessary metrics files. It can create it's own cron job/scheduled task to run itself every month, if you choose. It covers 28 browsers on 3 platforms, assuming you have PowerShell 7+. Please file any bugs if you find them. This isn't really going anywhere except to help internet users and my clients. Hope it's helpful PS - All of it generated with VS Code, Augmentcode AI (https://www.augmentcode.com/), OpenSpec (https://github.com/Fission-AI/OpenSpec), and beads (https://github.com/gastownhall/beads).
1 points · Open discussion
d-lo·Apr 14, 2026Recommendation phrase
I was largely inspired by beads (https://github.com/gastownhall/beads) but ended up vibe coding something slightly more tailored for the way I like to work. It’s basically a JIRA style task with a few fields (project, title, status, description, priority, parent task, and an array of notes) that I store in a Postgres database hosted in Neon. I have a lightweight API and human readable UI hosted in fly.io. The CLI is a Python API client that gets executed with uvx and can retrieve a list of tasks in JSONL format, get task details for a specific task ID, create a new task or update an existing task. I defined a skill for Claude Code and Codex to use the CLI and was off to the races- both harnesses are very good at following instructions to use the task tracker to manage work items. This approach works well for me because I can easily view t
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he task list and notes from any device and coding agents can coordinate across repos or development environments. In hindsight it might have been easier to wrap something like Todoist with a CLI so I didn’t have to host any of my own infra. I do think writing your own task manager with a coding agents is almost a standard right of passage in 2026- if you’re going to do that you might as well make one that you can use to coordinate work with LLM coding tools.
In Ask HN: Is Codex really on Par with Claude Code?
keeda·Mar 6, 2026
> No productivity studies of individual developers tackling tasks show a 10x speedup; results tend to be anywhere from +20% to minus 20%. The only study showing a -20% came back and said, "we now think it's +9% - +38%, but we can't prove rigorously because developers don't want to work without AI anymore": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142078 Even at the time of the original study, most other rigorous studies showed -5% (for legacy projects, obsolete languages) to 30% (more typical greenfield AND brownfield projects) way back in 2024. Today I hear numbers up to 60% from reports like DX. But this is exactly missing the point. Most of them are still doing things the old way, including the very process of writing code. Which brings me to this point: > There have been absolutely zero indicators that this is true. I could tell you my
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personal experience, or link various comments on HN, or point you to blogs like https://ghuntley.com/real/ (which also talks about the origanizational impedance mismatch for AI), but actual code would be a better data point. So there are some open-source projects worth looking at, but they are typically dismissed because they look so weird to us. Here's two mostly vibe-coded (as in, minimal code review, apparently) projects that people shredded for having weird code, but is already used by 10s of 1000s of people, up to 11 - 18K stars now. Look at the commit volume and patterns for O(300K) LoC in a couple of months, mostly from one guy and his agent: https://github.com/steveyegge/beads/graphs/commit-activity https://github.com/steveyegge/gastown/graphs/commit-activity It's like nothing we've seen before, almost equal number of LoC additions and deletions, in the 100s of Ks! It's still not clear how this will pan out long term, but the volume of code and apparent utility (based purely on popularity) is undeniable.
In Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
jbdamask·Mar 5, 2026Submission

Show HN: Beads planner plugin for Claude Code

I swear by Yegge's Beads https://github.com/steveyegge/beads. Just love it. One of the things Steve talks about in his best practice guide is that the only things that belong in Beads are things that are being actively worked on; it's not a backlog. I also really like Claude's planning mode, except for the fact that it's tightly coupled with execution. A pattern I've found is to work in different loops: a planning loop and an execution loop. Planning loop: 1. Use GitHub issues for backlog items. Whenever I get an idea, I just make an issue with minimal detail. 2. Pull issue into Claude Code 3. Create branch 4. Use a home-grown planning skill that reads the Issue and operates pretty much the same way as Claude's but without the straight-to-execution annoyance 5. Once the plan is finalized, decompose it into Beads 6. Check in branch and t
Read the rest
ag as "ready" Execution loop: Watch GitHub for "ready" issues. When one is found, checkout a worktree then start building. All the beads are self-contained in the issue so there's no need for more discussion with the LLM. I turned the planning phase into a Claude plugin that I can invoke with a slash command, /beads-planner issue 44. The execution loop can be ralph or even just interactive CC sessions. Everyone is coming up with their own way to build but figured I'd share because this works for me. YMMV
1 points · Open discussion
oceanic·Mar 2, 2026
I’ve been using Steve Yegge’s Beads[1] lightweight issue tracker for this type of multi-agent context tracking. I only run a couple of agents at a time, but with Beads you can create issues, then agents can assign them to themselves, etc. Agents or the human driver can also add context in epics, and I think you can have perpetual issues which contain context too. Or could make them as a type of issue yourself, it’s a very flexible system. [1] https://github.com/steveyegge/beads
In Parallel coding agents with tmux and Markdown specs

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