Overview
Steve Yegge describes how he designed the Beads CLI system by observing AI agent behavior over 4 months, implementing whatever the agents attempted to do until their “hallucinations” became real functionality. This approach turns AI hallucinations into working features.
The Breakdown
- Desire Paths design methodology - Building software by observing what users (in this case AI agents) naturally try to do, then implementing those attempted actions
- Complex CLI built for agents, not humans - Beads evolved 100+ subcommands with sub-subcommands and aliases specifically to match AI agent expectations
- Hallucination-driven development - Rather than fighting AI mistakes, Yegge implemented whatever agents tried to do with Beads until their guesses became correct
- 4-month iterative process - The system required months of observation and implementation to reach a state where agent interactions mostly work as expected