nc://beads

Beads: read, claim and update a bd (Beads) work graph from the agent, six tools over the CLI. A Nodecode rewrite of jacobhausler/hermes-beads by jacobhausler.

bd keeps one work graph per project in a store directory, read and written by one CLI: beads, their blockers, and who holds what. This cell gives the model the same six verbs the plugin gave it, each of them one fixed argv call to that CLI, so an agent and a person read the same state and the agent can take a bead without taking someone else's.

Get it

Tell the agent "add the beads cell", or run nodecode add nc://beads.

Set it up

1. Install the bd CLI, 1.3 or newer: brew install beads, or a release tarball from steveyegge/beads.
2. Run bd init in a project, which makes the store there (the directory holding .beads/).
3. Point the cell at it, in /settings or the beads section of ~/.nodecode/config.jsonc:

{
  "beads": {
    "bd": "bd",                       // its name on PATH, or a path to it
    "store": "/home/you/code/myproj", // the store a call that names none uses
    "actor": "you"                     // the name claims and writes are recorded under
  }
}

Nothing there is a secret. store and actor are conveniences: every tool takes a workspace (and the writes an actor) of its own, so one session can work several stores.

Use it

The model gets beads_frontier (what is ready now: blocked and claimed rows out, epics out), beads_show, beads_claim (claimed, then read back -- a bead another actor holds is refused with their name), beads_update (a guarded write over priority, notes, due, estimate, external_ref or defer, under an if_assignee/if_status pair: a guard that no longer holds writes nothing and answers STALE), beads_comment (append-only) and beads_smoke (which bd, which store, how much is ready).

/beads shows the operator the frontier, /beads LABEL the one label's. From eval:

(beads:frontier "/home/you/code/myproj")
(beads:show "/home/you/code/myproj" "bd-3")
(beads:claim "/home/you/code/myproj" "bd-3" :actor "ada")
(beads:update "/home/you/code/myproj" "bd-3" :actor "ada"
              :if-assignee "ada" :if-status "in_progress"
              :fields (nlk:make-json-object "priority" 2))

Closing a bead stays with plain bd close: the escape hatch is the product.

What it does not do

The plugin's Hermes Desktop pane (a task tree with blocker cards) is an Electron surface, not part of this cell. The two unguarded description/title replacement verbs the plugin shipped disabled are left out as well; edit content with bd itself.