Working with protected branches

[jamestelfer]

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing when working with protected branches.

I had the configuration set up from the start to use protected branches, but bd was continually committing to the current branch. I started from scratch with the latest version and the daemon and it seems to be basically working with the jsonl file.

However the docs indicate that the protected branch will contain metadata.json and config.yaml, which doesn't seem to happen for me. Should I commit these files manually to the worktree, or should they be on the main branch?

I feel like I've missed something simple here.

[DreadPirateRobertz]

Protected branches with beads can be tricky. Here's how it should work:

Expected behavior: When bd detects a protected branch, it should commit to the .beads worktree branch (typically beads/data or similar) instead of the current working branch. The JSONL file goes on this separate branch.

What should be on the protected branch: metadata.json and config.yaml should indeed be on the main (protected) branch since they're project configuration. If bd init didn't put them there, you can commit them manually:

git add .beads/metadata.json .beads/config.yaml
git commit -m "chore: add beads config"

Common gotcha: If bd was continually committing to the current branch before you set up protected branches, it may have put the JSONL data there too. After switching to protected-branch mode, you might need to clean up:

1. Remove JSONL from the main branch
2. Run bd export to regenerate the JSONL
3. Let bd commit it to the correct worktree branch

With Dolt backend (v0.51+): The protected branch concern is mostly eliminated since issue data lives in the Dolt database (gitignored) rather than in git-committed JSONL files. The JSONL backup is generated on export only.

If you're still hitting issues, sharing the output of bd config show and cat .beads/metadata.json would help diagnose the specific configuration.