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[return to "Beads – A memory upgrade for your coding agent"]
1. wowami+Pv[view] [source] 2025-11-28 11:11:59
>>latchk+(OP)
I went through the whole readme first and kept wondering what problem the system aims to address. I understood that it is a distributed issue tracker. But how can that lead to a memory upgrade? It also hints at replacing markdown for plans.

So is the issue the format or lack of structure which a local database can bring in?

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2. simonw+mw[view] [source] 2025-11-28 11:17:24
>>wowami+Pv
LLMs famously don't have a memory - every time you start a new conversation with the you are effectively resetting them to a blank slate.

Giving them somewhere to jot down notes is a surprisingly effective way of working around this limitation.

The simplest version of this is to let them read and write files. I often tell my coding agents "append things you figure out to notes.md as you are working" - then in future sessions I can tell them to read or search that file.

Beads is a much more structured way of achieving the same thing. I expect it works well partly because LLM training data makes them familiar with the issue/bug tracker style of working already.

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3. wowami+gx[view] [source] 2025-11-28 11:24:59
>>simonw+mw
Thanks! It is the structure that matters here, then. Just like you, I ask my agents to keep updating a markdown file locally and use it as a reference during working sessions. This mechanism has worked well for me.

I even occasionally ask agents to move some learnings back to my Claude.md or Agents.md file.

I'm curious whether complicating this behaviour with a database integration would further abstract the work in progress. Are we heading down a slippery slope?

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