Beads

by gastownhall

Beads is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by gastownhall in beads.

26.3K stars1.8K forkson gastownhall/beadsAdded 2026/08/14Repository updated 2026/08/13

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

agentsclaude-codecoding

Install in seconds

Install Beads

Copy Beads into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/gastownhall/beads/tree/main/plugins/beads/skills/beads ~/.claude/skills/beads

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/gastownhall/beads.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: plugins/beads/skills/beads/SKILL.md in gastownhall/beads
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/beads
Collection: One of 3 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2451 skills

What Beads does

Beads provides a Dolt-backed graph issue tracker for AI agents to manage multi-session work with dependencies and persistent memory across conversation compaction. Use when work spans sessions, has blockers, or needs context recovery after compaction.

Beads is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Beads comes from a repository tagged agents, claude-code and coding.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Beads - Persistent Task Memory for AI Agents

Graph-based issue tracker that survives conversation compaction. Provides persistent memory for multi-session work with complex dependencies.

bd vs TodoWrite

Decision test: "Will I need this context in 2 weeks?" YES = bd, NO = TodoWrite.

bd (persistent)	TodoWrite (ephemeral)
Multi-session, dependencies, compaction survival	Single-session linear tasks
Dolt-backed team sync	Conversation-scoped

See BOUNDARIES.md for detailed comparison.

Prerequisites

bd --version  # Requires v0.60.0+

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Beads

What else does gastownhall publish alongside Beads?
Beads is one of 3 skills that DirSkills catalogs from gastownhall/beads, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Beads and Beads Documentation. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Beads does, and is maintained by gastownhall in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the gastownhall/beads page.
How does Beads compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Beads ranks #214 by stars among the 2451 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Beads against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.