Startup Hooks for AI Agents

This directory contains startup hook scripts that help AI agents automatically detect and adapt to changes in their environment.

bd-version-check.sh

Purpose: Automatically detect bd (beads) upgrades and show what changed

Features:

✅ Detects when bd version changes between sessions
✅ Shows bd info --whats-new output automatically
✅ Auto-updates outdated git hooks
✅ Persists version tracking in .beads/metadata.json
✅ Works today - no bd code changes required!

Usage:

# Source the script at session start (recommended)
source examples/startup-hooks/bd-version-check.sh

# Or execute it directly
bash examples/startup-hooks/bd-version-check.sh

Integration Examples

Claude Code

If Claude Code supports startup hooks:

# Add to .claude/hooks/session-start
source examples/startup-hooks/bd-version-check.sh

Alternatively, manually run at the start of each coding session.

GitHub Copilot

Add to your shell initialization file:

# ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
# Run bd version check when entering a beads project
if [ -d ".beads" ]; then
  source /path/to/beads/examples/startup-hooks/bd-version-check.sh
fi

Cursor

Add to workspace settings or your shell init file following the same pattern as GitHub Copilot.

Generic Integration

Any AI coding environment that allows custom startup scripts can source this file.

Requirements

bd (beads): Must be installed and in PATH
jq: Required for JSON manipulation (brew install jq on macOS, apt-get install jq on Ubuntu)
.beads directory: Must exist in current project

How It Works

Version Detection: Reads current bd version and compares to .beads/metadata.json
Change Notification: If version changed, displays upgrade banner with what's new
Hook Updates: Checks for outdated git hooks and auto-updates them
Persistence: Updates metadata.json with current version for next session

Example Output

🔄 bd upgraded: 0.23.0 → 0.24.2

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🆕 What's New in bd (Current: v0.24.2)
=============================================================

## v0.24.2 (2025-11-23)
  • New feature X
  • Bug fix Y
  • Performance improvement Z

[... rest of what's new output ...]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💡 Review changes above and adapt your workflow accordingly

🔧 Git hooks outdated. Updating to match bd v0.24.2...
✓ Git hooks updated successfully

Edge Cases Handled

Not in a beads project: Silently exits (safe to include in global shell init)
bd not installed: Silently exits
jq not installed: Shows warning but doesn't break
metadata.json missing: Auto-creates it
First run: Sets version without showing upgrade message
bd command fails: Silently exits

Troubleshooting

Q: Script doesn't detect version change A: Check that .beads/metadata.json exists and contains last_bd_version field

Q: "jq not found" warning A: Install jq: brew install jq (macOS) or apt-get install jq (Ubuntu)

Q: Git hooks not auto-updating A: Ensure you have write permissions to .git/hooks/ directory

GitHub Discussion #239: "Upgrading beads: how to let the Agent know"
Parent Epic: bd-nxgk - Agent upgrade awareness system
AGENTS.md: See "After Upgrading bd" section for manual workflow

README.md