Beads (bd) is an open-source task coordination and state orchestration harness for AI coding agents developed by Gastown Hall. It provides a structured, version-controlled task graph and execution framework that enables coding agents—such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and Amp—to collaborate deterministically across codebase tasks without losing context or clobbering state. In day-to-day use, Beads operates via the `bd` command-line interface and repo-level configuration directories (`.beads/` and `.agent/`). Workflows are defined as declarative formulas (such as `gh-issue-to-pr`) and step-by-step agent instructions. Task state, execution leases, and agent artifacts are tracked through a versioned database layer (leveraging Dolt), with changes pushed and pulled via commands like `bd dolt push` and `bd dolt pull`. Unlike traditional CLI agent wrappers that rely on transient in-memory chat histories, Beads treats agent tasks as discrete, version-controlled units of work. It incorporates explicit lease migrations, contradiction-handling cursors, and conflict-resolution workflows so multiple agent instances or human developers can work asynchronously on the same repository. Beads is free, open-source software distributed on GitHub. It is implemented as a CLI tool with plugin integrations for agent environments like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot.
Tags: ai agent, cli, coding agent, developer tools, memory, OpenSource