Beads is a persistent-memory pattern from the Gastown project: immutable, git-backed records of every decision an agent makes and its outcome, carrying full provenance. Rather than storing this history as embeddings in a vector database, agents query past beads through task graphs and a SQL-addressable data plane, described as structured, queryable institutional memory that goes beyond what a flat markdown memory file can hold.
Usage
It is presented as one of several techniques for making multi-agent development loops smarter over time, alongside per-agent token budgeting with kill criteria and self-reflection proposals written to a REFLECTION.md file after each task.