Overview

Steve Yegge describes how he designed Beads, a development tool with a complex CLI interface that was specifically built for AI agents rather than humans. The key insight is that he made AI hallucinations real by implementing whatever commands the agents tried to use, creating a system where agent guesses are now typically correct.

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The Breakdown

  • Beads evolved through “Desire Paths” design - observing how AI agents naturally tried to interact with the system and then building those imagined capabilities into reality
  • The CLI has 100+ subcommands with complex nested structures, but this complexity is intentional - it’s designed for agents, not humans
  • Yegge systematically implemented agent hallucinations by watching what commands they attempted to use and making those commands actually work
  • After 4 months of this iterative process, nearly every agent guess is now correct - the system anticipates how AI agents think and provides the interfaces they expect