Local-first by default
A local-first issue tracker that keeps your data on your machine
Beadbox is built on the beads issue tracker, which stores every bead in a Dolt database on your own disk. No cloud. No accounts. No telemetry on your issue data. When you want to share, you push to a remote you control.
Install with Homebrew
brew install --cask beadbox/beadbox/beadboxWhy local-first matters
Cloud issue trackers feel productive until the day the vendor gets acquired, the pricing changes, or an outage takes out your team for an afternoon. Your issues are not really yours. You are renting access to them.
Local-first flips that. Your beads live in a Dolt database in a directory on your machine. You can read it, commit it to Git, back it up to an external drive, or push it to a remote when you want collaboration. The source of truth is always local.
Built on Dolt
Dolt is a SQL database with Git-like version control. Every bead, every comment, every status change is a row in a table that has a full history you can query, diff, and merge.
You can run bd log to see what changed. You can branch your beads the same way you branch code. You can merge two workspaces and resolve conflicts at the row level. This is not something a typical cloud tracker can offer.
No accounts, no cloud lock-in
You do not sign up for Beadbox. There is nothing to sign up for. Install the app, point it at a directory, and start tracking work.
When you want to share with a teammate or let an AI agent push updates from a CI runner, you start a Dolt SQL server (the bd CLI does this for you) and connect Beadbox to it. You control where that server runs.
Privacy by design
Beadbox reads your database directly. It does not upload your issues, your comments, or your workspace names to any server. The app bundle has no analytics on your bead content.
Product analytics on app usage (which buttons get clicked, whether the app crashes) are opt-in and documented in our privacy policy. Your issue content never leaves your machine unless you push it to a remote you have configured.
A good fit for AI coding agents
Local-first matters even more when you have AI agents working on your codebase. Agents need a task system that is fast, that they can read and write without network hops, and that survives a cloud outage without stopping the fleet.
bd gives them that on the command line. Beadbox gives you the human view of what the fleet is doing.
Keep your issues where your code lives
If you already run your development environment locally, your issues should too. Install bd, install Beadbox, and get a real issue tracker that does not phone home.