# Beads by Steve Yegge Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/beads/ 46 people recommended Beads by Steve Yegge in Hacker News comments, 23 had mixed feelings and 49 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 12 months, in 45 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Slightly more people criticize it than recommend it. Gives coding agents a git-backed task and memory system, so they can break work into tracked, dependent tasks. Critics say it is buggy and overbuilt for simple use. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Overcomplicated and hard to follow (4 comments in the sample): "Beads is an incredibly difficult-to-follow mess for something that is at its core a pretty simple idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510336)) "The readme is pretty lengthy so it was a little hard to identify what is the core problem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076877)) "when I got to the phrase "landing the plane" I started looking for simpler alternatives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494794)) - Buggy, fragile under heavy use (2 comments in the sample): "Its really buggy and the bugs seem to confuse the agent since it was given instructions to do things a certain way that dont work…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467414)) "it's fallen apart for me after a couple weeks of moderate use on two different projects now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715234)) - Creates clutter and misplaced files (2 comments in the sample): "It's slop to a level that people create extensive scripts to try and purge it from the system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510121)) "Then you don't need to clutter up your repo with these MD files and .beads directories" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46079997)) - Merge conflicts and git hook interference (2 comments in the sample): "I tried using beads. There kept being merge conflicts and the agent just kept one or the other changes instead of merging it intelligently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46469974)) "It's not really malware, but it's a mess. It installed so much shit and it interfered with your git hooks and stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519929)) ## Why people recommend it - Widely adopted, praised for agentic coding (4 comments in the sample): "Despite it's quirks I think beads is going to go down as one of the first pieces of software that got some adoption" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46507703)) "Beads, which is what inspired my project, with some tens of thousands of developers using it or more now?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46964086)) "Beads is amazing. It’s such a simple concept but elevates agentic coding to another levels" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46519847)) - Breaks big work into tracked tasks (3 comments in the sample): "break it down into beads (small tasks). Your main agent then spawns workers that perform a task with limited scope." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038719)) "All I do to be productive with a coding agent is tell it to break a problem down into tasks, store it inside beads" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46426716)) "The beads allows us to create epics/tasks/subtasks and associated dependency structure down to a granular bead" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839635)) - Keeps agent state across context windows (3 comments in the sample): "Projects like Beads help with memory consolidation by making it somewhat moot, since it stays "offline" and can be recollected at any moment." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597924)) "It's helpful for getting Claude code to work with tasks that will span multiple context windows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077548)) "I also really like Yegge’s beads for LLMs keeping state and track of what they’re doing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692620)) - Improves agent results on larger projects (2 comments in the sample): "I find that with Beads, because I refine the tickets with Claude, it does way better at tasks this way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554419)) "a ticketing system similar to Beads which has yielded more predictable results with Claude" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112358)) ## Other task managers people recommend - [Apple Reminders](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-reminders/): 12 recommend, 3 mixed, 13 criticize - [Things 3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/things/): 7 recommend, 2 mixed, 1 criticize - [ticket by wedow](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ticket/): 6 recommend, 0 mixed, 1 criticize - [Todoist](https://hackerapproved.com/p/todoist/): 6 recommend, 7 mixed, 6 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Beads by Steve Yegge", https://hackerapproved.com/p/beads/ (46 recommend, 23 mixed, 49 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.