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