Please help, I don't want automatic pushing

[boka-slickage]

hello, i am very frustrated with the automated backup features of beads. i have been fighting with it for the past two weeks and because of that i have wasted a lot of time

i don't want the branches i'm working on to be automatically pushed at any point, but beads does this on a timer or something? it automatically adds backup commits without asking me and also pushes all the commits in my branch because its backups stack on top of my changes.

i have done everything i can to prevent it from behaving like this, and after all this time, i the best solution i have come up with is to disable the backup daemon, and block the backups directory with .gitignore (which somehow even gets ignored by beads which still commits the backup directory ANYWAY). i also tried to delete the git hooks, but it seems like any time beads doctor gets run, it resets the git hooks so that beads continues to run the backups. so instead, i added lines in the git hooks to exit the script early - so that the doctor sees that the hooks are already there and doesnt try to re-add them

for more details on what i have done, i created a gist: disabling_beads_backups.md

i'm okay with having the backup files locally, but i don't think my entire team needs the same backup files that i have

the way this tool implements auto backups is so malicious, it's virus-like; and for the life of me, i can't get it to completely stop. i've got patches all over the place to mitigate the backup effects, but i don't think the tool should behave like this. seems like it should be trivial to add an option to disable the automatic backups

[peterkc]

I traced this through the codebase and your symptoms match a cluster of bugs that were fixed in v0.59.0 (released 2026-03-06). Based on the v0.58.0 markers in your git hooks, you appear to be on the affected version.

What's going on

Three bugs in v0.58.0 compound into the behavior you're describing:

1. Config overrides silently ignored (#2358) — backup.* keys weren't routed to config.yaml properly, so bd config set backup.git-push false appeared to save but was ignored at runtime. The auto-detection logic re-enabled backup whenever a git remote existed.

2. Backup commits on feature branches (#2364) — gitBackup() ran git add -f / git commit / git push on whatever branch was checked out, so bd: backup <timestamp> commits stack on top of your work and get pushed along with it.

3. git add -f bypasses .gitignore — the backup code force-stages files, so adding .beads/backup/ to .gitignore has no effect (as you discovered).

Also worth knowing: the daemon (no-daemon, auto-start-daemon) was removed in v0.50.0. The backup system now runs in-process after every write command, not as a background process. Those config keys don't do anything on your version.

Fix: upgrade to v0.59.0

The v0.59.0 release includes fixes for all three:

• 1be0a41 — git-push defaults to OFF, requires explicit opt-in
• d14bed5 — backup git commits skipped during hook runs and on feature branches
• 6e9a86f — backup.* config keys routed to config.yaml so overrides stick

After upgrading, you should be able to remove the hook workarounds and run bd doctor --fix to restore standard hooks. Then verify with:

bd --version               # should show v0.59.0
bd config set backup.git-push false   # explicitly off (should work now)

Workaround if you can't upgrade yet

The environment variable bypasses the broken config routing (confirmed by @eitsupi in #2241):

export BD_BACKUP_GIT_PUSH=false

Add this to your shell profile or .envrc. It works on v0.58.0 because Viper reads env vars directly, skipping the broken yaml config path.

For your team

The backup JSONL files are still created locally after upgrading — they just won't be committed or pushed to git unless someone explicitly enables backup.git-push. Upgrading everyone to v0.59.0 is the cleanest path forward.

[boka-slickage]

thanks for the quick reply! those are definitely the issues i've been facing

i'll see if i can upgrade with your tips, and i'll check back in

[boka-slickage]

looks gooood. i made sure to back up configs etc., ran through the upgrade and double checked functionality - seems to be working as expected now

i'll let the rest of my team know it's alright to upgrade to 0.59.0

thanks for the help!!