Comparison
sitrep vs Beads
Beads is the strongest agent-side state tool in this space: a dependency-aware issue tracker your coding agents plan, claim and close work in, synced through git. If the problem you are solving is your agent's memory, Beads is the better pick, because sitrepdoes not manage agents at all. The two tools point in opposite directions - and compose.
Disclosure: this page is written by the maker of sitrep. Read the framing with that in mind - and note that where the honest answer is "use Beads", this page says so.
The one-sentence difference
Beads exists because markdown plans are a poor memory for agents: it replaces them with a structured issue graph - dependencies, blockers, epics, ready-work queues - that agents read and write through the bd CLI, versioned and synced through git. sitrep points the other way: it is an AI project status dashboard for the human, a state layer parsed out of the organic markdown your agents already produce, with no format for anyone to adopt.
Put differently: Beads makes the agent smarter inside a repo that adopted it. sitrep makes you oriented across every repo, including the ones nobody instrumented - because the plans, decision logs and progress notes are already lying there.
Side by side
| sitrep | Beads | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI project status dashboard - a passive state layer over existing files | Dependency-aware issue tracker for coding agents: the bd CLI over a git-synced database |
| Built for | The human - a glanceable overview you read | The agent - structured memory it plans, claims and closes issues in |
| Format demanded | None - parses the organic markdown agents already write | Full adoption: install the CLI, route agents through it, work becomes issues in its database |
| What it reads | Plans, analyses, decision logs, progress notes - files nobody structured for a tool | Its own issue graph; the organic markdown history in your repos is invisible to it |
| Scope | Cross-project - one overview across every repo and workspace | Per-repo; repos that never installed it do not exist for it |
| Human overview | The core feature - status, decisions, staleness, newest activity first | A CLI; dashboards exist only as third-party community tools |
| Writes to your files | Three guarded state operations in the document’s own convention; nothing else, ever | Read-write by design - agents continuously update its issue database |
| Agent integration | MCP server exposing parsed state, read-only first | Deep and agent-first: setup commands for the major agents, MCP, hooks, ready-work queues |
| License and price | Commercial desktop app, in development | Free, MIT-licensed open source |
| Local-first | Yes - no account, no network, no telemetry by default | Yes - local and git-backed, no cloud dependency |
When to choose Beads
- Your agents run long-horizon, multi-session or multi-agent work in a repo, and losing the thread between sessions is the pain you are solving.
- You want real dependency edges - blockers, epics, discovered-from links, ready-work queues - not a flat task list.
- The agent is the primary consumer of project state, and a CLI is how you are happy to meet it.
- You want free, MIT-licensed open source with a large, active contributor community.
Agent-side state infrastructure is on sitrep's anti-roadmap permanently - that job is Beads', and it does it better than anything else right now.
When to choose sitrep
- Months of project state already live in organic markdown - plans, analyses, decision docs - and migrating it into any tracker is exactly the work you do not want.
- You want a human overview across every project - what moved, what is stalled, what is waiting on you - not a per-repo CLI.
- Some of your repos will never adopt any tool, and you still need to see them.
- You want zero operational weight: nothing to install per repo, nothing to migrate, nothing agents must be routed through.
Using both
These tools compose unusually well, because they never touch the same files. Beads structures the agent's working memory inside the repos that adopted it; sitrep reads the plans, analyses and decision docs those same agents keep writing anyway - across every repo, Beads or not. One is the agent's notebook, the other is your situation room. Both arelocal-first, git-friendly, and account-free.
sitrep is in development, launching first on macOS. Local-first - your files never leave your machine.