ac

Simple task tracking for LLM sessions.

ac - because sometimes you need to go back before bd

A spiritual fork of beads (bd), keeping the simplicity of v0.9.6 with added session-based claiming for multi-agent coordination.

Philosophy

• Dead simple: Single binary, minimal dependencies
• Plain text: JSONL files, human-readable, git-friendly
• Multi-agent: Sessions claim issues, obvious ownership
• Zero infrastructure: No SQLite, no daemon - just files

Installation

cargo install ac
# or build from source
cargo build --release

Quick Start

# Initialize in your project
ac init

# Create issues
ac create "Fix auth bug" -t bug -p 1
ac create "Add feature" -t feature -d "Description here"

# List issues (excludes closed by default)
ac list
ac list --all              # Include closed
ac list --status open      # Filter by status

# Show issue details
ac show ab-x7k2

# Update issues
ac update ab-x7k2 --status in_progress
ac update ab-x7k2 --priority 0
ac update ab-x7k2 --assignee alice

# Close issues
ac close ab-x7k2 --reason "Fixed in commit abc123"

Issue Types

• bug - Something broken
• feature - New functionality
• task - Work item
• epic - Large feature composed of subtasks
• chore - Maintenance work
• refactor - Code restructuring
• spike - Research/investigation

Priorities

• 0 - Critical (security, data loss, broken builds)
• 1 - High (major features, important bugs)
• 2 - Medium (default - nice-to-have features, minor bugs)
• 3 - Low (polish, optimization)
• 4 - Backlog (future ideas)

Storage

Data stored in .ac/ directory:

• config.json - Project config (version, ID prefix)
• issues.jsonl - One issue per line, sorted by ID

Why JSONL?

• Git-friendly: One issue per line = conflicts are per-issue
• Human-readable: Easy to inspect with standard tools
• Grep-able: grep ab-x7k2 .ac/issues.jsonl

IDs

Format: {prefix}-{random} (e.g., ab-x7k2)

• prefix: 2 chars derived from project path hash
• random: 4 chars lowercase alphanumeric

Same project always gets same prefix, different projects get different prefixes.

JSON Output

All commands support --json for programmatic use:

ac --json list
ac --json show ab-x7k2
ac --json create "New issue" -t task

Acknowledgment

ac is inspired by beads by Steve Yegge - an excellent issue tracker for AI-assisted development. We loved beads v0.9.6's simplicity before it evolved into a full messaging/routing system. ac takes that original simplicity and adds session-based claiming for multi-agent coordination.

License

Source-available. See LICENSE for details.