Transcription
I have been extensively doing AI pair programming for various clients and absolutely love Anthropic's Claude, except for one brutal problem: amnesia.
Claude Code is an AI coding assistant that works directly in your terminal, helping you build features, debug issues, and architect systems. But here is the catch. Every time you start a new session or hit context compaction, Claude forgets everything. All the bugs it discovered, architectural decisions you made, and "fix this later" notes. Everything gone. You spend half your time re-explaining what you were working on instead of actually building it.
This is where Beads enters into the picture. Beads is an issue tracker built specifically for AI agents. Instead of you maintaining stale to-do lists, Claude automatically creates issues as it works. It tracks dependencies between tasks and updates detailed notes at milestones. When you start fresh after context complexion, Claude reads its own notes from Beads and instantly knows what you were building, what decisions were made, and what's next. It's a persistent memory for your AI pair programmer.
In this video, we'll walk through real code examples showing how the amnesia problem destroys productivity, and then I will also show you how Beads solves it with automatic issue tracking, smart dependencies, and persistent memory that survives across sessions. First, I thought I would do a hands-on one, but I think there is a lot of uh screen slop which really, really muddies the water. So I have just built some slides, but I can assure you you will learn more this way, and let me know in the comments what you think about this new format.
By the way, this is Fad Miraa, and I welcome you to the channel. Please like the video and subscribe, and do me a favor: become a member, as that keeps the lights on uh on the channel. Also, if you're looking for AI updates without any hype, please follow me on X, as I regularly post there now. Okay. And of course, if you're looking to build an AI project for any enterprise, for any use case, please reach out at vadmiraza.com, and you can find the link in the video description.
So, let's get started with the example. Now, what we are going to do, we'll just first see what exactly is this uh forgetful problem with AI agents, especially with Claude. So, let's get started.
Now, if you look at this screen, Claude discovering three important issues while working on this repo of mine: rate limiting, email validation, and slug uniqueness. These discoveries happen naturally during implementation while I am having a chat with Claude in a session. So, this is my day one. It has done these discoveries. Everything looks good. I have spent the whole day explaining all the context.
Then comes the second day. Now I have started a new session, but all the context is gone. The discovered issues, completed work, and all the decisions evaporated. Now I have to spend the time reconstructing what was already figured out.
This is where Beads come into play. All you need to do in order to set it up is just download it with the kernel command, and I will drop the link in the video description. And just go to your repo and simply just do `bd init` and initialize it. So, this one command creates a local SQLite database and a Git synced backup, and this is only one manual setup. Everything else happens automatically with some um magic by Stevia G. It just gets integrated with Claude.
So, what has just happened? Look um, what happened here is that under the hood, it, the Beads stores everything in two places: a fast local database for Claude to query, and a Git version file that syncs across your machine. So, if you have multiple people working on it, they can just simply pull and push from the the repo, commit to it, and then everyone would be using the same stuff. And then you can simply import it in your SQLite database if you have a multi-person team there. Okay.
Now, how exactly does Beads solve it? So, look at this. There is another new day. Whatever you are talking with Claude, Claude now files issues automatically as it discovers them. No manual to-do list. Each discovered issue is linked to the work that uncovered it. So, you have been talking with it, you are filing it, Claude is storing it in the memory with the help of Beads. You are not doing anything. You are just carrying on with your session as is.
So, at the end of the day, what happens is that um, at key milestones, Claude has enriched the notes with what was completed, decisions made, and what's next. This becomes future Claude's memory. Now, when the, you know, this is what day one was, and this was the end of day one. Now, let's say day two comes in. Claude already has everything. It reads its own notes and reconstructs full context instantly. No re-explaining needed. It knows what was done. It's a new session, new conversation, and Claude already knows what was done yesterday, what's pending, and what was discovered. How good is that?
And if you notice here, you're not doing anything different. Beads is taking care of everything here. So, Claude is automatically doing the `bd ready`, `bd list show`. You're not doing it. So, this is the beauty of Claude here.
Now, there are a lot of other features in it. For example, um, you can also see that Claude is creating a hard blocker relationship. So, the dashboard, for example, in this case, the dashboard cannot start until authentication is done, and this prevents working on things in the wrong order. So, there are different, you know, uh dependencies in your code. You don't want Claude or any agent to start working in parallel or build something which is dependent on another feature. So, this is another beauty of it. So, the dependency system really ensures Claude only sees work that's actually ready to start. Blocked items stay hidden until their dependencies are resolved.
And as I said, you know, there are a lot of other chains, like it has a discovery chain. Every discovered issue is linked to the work that found it. You get a complete audit trail of while building X, we discovered Y, Z, and W, and it just files it away. And then, you know, if you want more fancy stuff, there is also some parent chart relationship which lets Claude break down large features into trackable pieces. Each subtask is automatically linked to the parent epic, and then, you know, if you want to view the hierarchy, you just use a `show` command, and with that, you can see the entire feature hierarchy at a glance: what's done, what's in progress, and overall completion percentage.
And then, these are some of the commands where you can get a bird's-eye view of your project status, like how many issues are open, in progress, or done, plus how many Claude discovered automatically. And then, you know, there are a lot of other things, like, for example, you can instantly see what's stuck and why. And primarily, this helps you prioritize unblocking work or decide what to tackle. And you can also use something as Git sync across machines, like you are using your desktop or laptop or phone, you can simply use it, you know, uh inter-machine sort of workflow if you please, like you're working on something on your desktop in your office, and then you can also just move it to your home.
So, if you just look at the whole workflow, this is how it works. So, the entire workflow is in one, you know, you can see that where Claude is managing everything automatically after you initialize this, and then accessible memory anywhere you work. This is the beauty of this tool. Really, really love it.
Um, so key takeaway, you know, Beads transformed Claude from an amnesiac assistant into a persistent pair programmer who never forgets what you are building. Saves a lot of trouble, trust me. So, that's it. This is what I have been actually using in production environments with real clients, real use cases, because AI is awesome and great. But when you actually implement in the real world, then only then you realize the problems like these, and then I think the tools like Beads are really, really very helpful.
Anthropic might really, you know, put it [clears throat] uh inside Claude's next version, who knows. But for now, Beads is really, really awesome. So, please like the video and subscribe, and become a member, as that helps a lot.