Beads is an issue tracker designed for AI-assisted development. Your agents create and manage issues via CLI while you code. It's gotten popular fast — 50K+ users, 30+ community tools.
I wanted a way to see all my beads issues without opening VS Code. So I built Beadbox — a native desktop app using Tauri v2 + Next.js.
What it does
- Epic tree view with progress bars — see your project hierarchy at a glance
-
Real-time sync — WebSocket watches your local
.beads/directory, updates hit the UI in seconds - Dependency badges — which issues are blocked and by what
- Multi-workspace — switch between projects instantly
- Inline editing — update status, priority, assignee without leaving the app
- Keyboard navigation — j/k to move, Enter to open, Esc to close
The stack
Tauri v2 wraps the whole thing as a native app. Rust spawns a Node.js sidecar that runs the Next.js server + a WebSocket server. The WebView points at localhost. The web app doesn't know it's inside a native wrapper.
Bundle is ~160MB (84MB is Node.js itself). For comparison, a bare Electron app starts around 200MB, and you get native window chrome + system WebView instead of bundled Chromium.
Runs everywhere
macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel), Linux (.deb + AppImage), and Windows. Code-signed and notarized on macOS.
Try it
brew tap beadbox/cask && brew install --cask beadbox
Or grab a binary from beadbox.app
No account needed. No cloud. Reads your local beads database directly. Free during beta.
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