gastownhall/beads (Beads) is a distributed issue tracker that manages long-running work for coding agents as a dependency graph instead of markdown plans. The latest release is v1.3.1, and the provided record shows no changes in this version. It is written in Go and released under the MIT license. The project describes itself as a tool that augments an agent's memory.
Beads manages dependencies between tasks on top of the Dolt database. Hash-based IDs (bd-a1b2) are designed to avoid merge conflicts when several agents work together. The core flow is to find unblocked tasks with `bd ready`, claim them with `--claim`, and close them when done with `bd close`. `bd init` and `bd setup` configure hooks, skills, and AGENTS.md in a project. The README also documents a feature that summarizes long-closed tasks to reduce context, message threads and mail delegation, relationship edges, hierarchical IDs, and a stealth mode that does not commit task files. Supported platforms are macOS, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD.
The README, however, has no performance figures or benchmark tables, so there is no basis for judging it more efficient than other approaches. What the provided material confirms is the tool's features and supported platforms, and the changes in v1.3.1 are not given. So rather than evaluating the improvements in this release, it is more reasonable to treat it as a tool worth looking at when you need task management through a dependency graph.