beady-eye

bdi is one unblinking eye over every beads tracker you point it at. It draws each tracker's work as a tree, and beside every bead an agent has claimed, the live herdr pane that agent is sitting in.

beads knows the work. herdr knows the agents. Neither has heard of the other, so neither can tell you that atlas-5 was claimed by a pane that died on Tuesday. Something old has opened an eye over both, and it can.

The atlas project is made up. atlas-5 is the Tuesday case: beads says an agent claimed it, herdr has no pane for that agent, and only something looking at both can tell you.

The eye only looks. It never writes to a tracker. Changing the work is still bd's job, and the eye finds this arrangement acceptable.

Summoning

Homebrew fetches a built binary, for macOS and Linux on Intel and arm64:

$ brew install codeforbreakfast/tap/bdi

crates.io, if you would rather compile it yourself:

$ cargo install beady-eye

Nix, with flakes on, builds the tip of main. Nothing caches it, so the first run is a cup of tea:

$ nix run github:CodeForBreakfast/beady-eye

From your own flake, pin a release tag and take the package or the overlay:

inputs.beady-eye.url = "github:CodeForBreakfast/beady-eye/v0.7.0";

beady-eye.packages.${system}.default                # the package
nixpkgs.overlays = [ beady-eye.overlays.default ];  # pkgs.beady-eye

Or take a binary from the latest release. There is one per platform with a .sha256 beside it, and the Linux ones are static. Rename it bdi and put it on your PATH. Apple has not been asked to sign it, so a copy a browser downloaded needs xattr -d com.apple.quarantine bdi before macOS will let it open its eye.

The crate is beady-eye. The command is bdi.

Opening the eye

Stand in a repository beads tracks and run it:

$ bdi

No config. It reads that project, draws its trees, and keeps them fresh. Three bands: the forest at the top, the tail of the selected bead's pane under it, and a foot row with notices on the left and keys on the right.

Keys to start with. ? lists the lot.

key	does
↑ ↓ j k	move
← → h l	collapse or expand; again to move to the parent or first child
Enter	open the bead, and from there, focus its pane
f	focus the selected bead's pane
a	every tree, not only the ones with a live agent
/ n N	search ids and titles
y	copy the bead id (OSC 52, so it survives ssh and a multiplexer)
^R	read the trackers again now
q	avert the eye

bdi --json writes the same snapshot to stdout instead of drawing it. That is also what to reach for when stdout is not a terminal; bdi | cat says so and exits.

Several trackers

A config file opens the eye on all of them:

[[projects]]
name = "atlas"
path = "/home/you/atlas"

[[projects]]
name = "orbital"
path = "/srv/work/orbital"
environment_command = "nix develop -c"

That lives at ~/.config/beady-eye/config.toml, or wherever --config says, and an edit takes effect while bdi runs. Start it under one of the projects and it reads that one alone. Start it anywhere else, or pass --all-projects, and it reads them all. --project NAME picks.

Each project is read with its own bd, entered the way you would enter it yourself. An .envrc and direnv need nothing said. Anything else, say it with environment_command.

docs/configuration.md has the rest: badges drawn from what a bead carries, credentials, extra roots, intervals, the light theme, and the socket you can poke to say a tracker changed so the eye stops polling it.

Being seen

The eye draws only what it can find. An agent that wants to be found tells the bead which pane it is in. One that does not still toils, but toils among the unaccounted-for below the trees, and no amount of staring will move it up.

docs/agents.md is addressed to the agent rather than to you. Hand it over, and let it fold the lines into whatever it already obeys.

What it needs

• Linux or macOS. Unix sockets and unix signals. Windows would need a different ritual entirely.
• bd 1.1.0 or newer. An older one is reported on the project's line rather than obeyed. Packaged builds lag, so check what yours says.
• A tracker bd can open. Server or embedded. A Dolt server wants a password, and it reaches bd in BEADS_DOLT_PASSWORD, from your shell or from a project's credential_command.
• herdr, for the agents. Without it you get the trees and the claims, and every tree is drawn. With it you get the point: which claim has a live pane behind it, which pane toils on nothing any bead has heard of, and the tail.
• git, for worktrees. Without it the project is named after its directory and a pane cannot be placed by worktree.
• A terminal that honours OSC 52, for y. Terminal.app does not, and says nothing about it.

Status

Released, and gazed into daily by the people who wrote it. The design is in docs/design.md.

Versions are 0.x, and a breaking change bumps the minor. Pin a tag. 1.0.0 arrives when the shape has settled, not when something breaks.