Get beads on macOS and Linux Now!
Get beads with one command
Pick your system, reveal the step-by-step guide, copy the command, paste it into your terminal and press Enter. This command was taken from the project's own documentation and checked against it.
Not available for Windows yet.
beads doesn't publish an install command for Windows anywhere we can verify, so there's nothing for us to show you. We won't invent one. It does document one for macOS and Linux — switch to that tab.
Pastes into PowerShell and installs beads on your Windows machine in one step. Runs as your normal user account, and needs no administrator rights.
Not available for macOS yet.
beads doesn't publish an install command for macOS or Linux anywhere we can verify, so there's nothing for us to show you. We won't invent one.
Pastes into your terminal and installs beads on your macOS or Linux machine in one step — no manual setup, no build tools. It fetches the project's own install script and runs it, which is the standard way these tools ship — worth a read if you like to know what's running.
How to set up beads, step by step
Open Terminal. On a Mac it's in Applications ▸ Utilities, or press Cmd+Space and type Terminal. On Linux, press Ctrl+Alt+T. Paste the command and press Enter.
Run beads --help to see the available commands, and
beads --version to confirm the install worked. If your shell complains about
permissions, that project usually documents a corrected command on its own site.
This downloads the project's shell installer and pipes it straight into your shell, which executes it without saving a file. Same caveat: it's the project's script, but read it first if you want to be sure.
What beads does
- Dolt-Powered: Version-controlled SQL database with cell-level merge, native branching, and built-in sync via Dolt remotes
- Agent-Optimized: JSON output, dependency tracking, and auto-ready task detection
- Graph Links, and for knowledge graphs
- CI/CD — isolated task tracking without repo-level side effects
- Compaction: Semantic "memory decay" summarizes old closed tasks to save context window
- Server —. Connects to an external
Summarised from beads's own README.
About beads
beads is an open-source developer tool.
| Category | Developer tool |
|---|---|
| Install method | shell one-liner (curl | bash) |
| Windows | no install command published |
| macOS / Linux | documented install command available |
| Price | Free and open source |
| Command verified | Yes — checked against the project README |
| Popularity | 27k stars on the project's public repository |
On mobile
beads is a command-line tool, so there is no phone app for it — a phone has no shell to run it in. You'll need a desktop, or a remote shell into a machine that has one.
beads is developed by its own authors. This page is an independent reference; we are not affiliated with or sponsored by the project. The command shown here was reproduced from the project's public documentation — always check the project's own documentation before running anything.