Ops Toil Audit
Bead: beads-hub-8e4 | Date: 2026-02-20 | Author: PltOps
Current Manual / Repetitive Processes
1. Heartbeat Dispatch Loop (HEARTBEAT.md)
- What: Every heartbeat polls beads-hub, classifies beads, spawns agents, notifies goern
- Frequency: Every ~30 min
- Toil:
git pull && bd ready --json+ classification + dispatch + Signal notification - Automation opportunity: HIGH — A dedicated cron job or webhook on beads-hub could auto-dispatch beads without burning main-agent tokens. A simple script:
bd ready --json | jq→ match keywords → spawn agent via OpenClaw API.
2. Memory File Management
- What: Daily
memory/YYYY-MM-DD.mdcreation, periodic MEMORY.md curation - Frequency: Every session + periodic review
- Toil: Manual file creation, reading old files, distilling into MEMORY.md
- Automation opportunity: MEDIUM — Auto-create daily file on first heartbeat. Auto-archive files older than 14 days. Memory curation requires judgment (keep manual).
3. Bead Sync & Push
- What:
bd sync && git pushafter every bead operation - Frequency: Multiple times per session
- Toil: Repetitive git ceremony
- Automation opportunity: HIGH — Wrapper script
bd-syncthat doesbd sync && git pushin one command. Or a post-commit hook in beads-hub.
4. PR/Issue Follow-Up (open-prs.json)
- What: Check each PR status, ping stale ones, spawn CodeMonkey for changes
- Frequency: Daily during business hours
- Toil: HTTP calls to Codeberg/GitHub APIs, status comparison
- Automation opportunity: HIGH — GitHub/Codeberg webhooks or a cron script that checks
open-prs.jsonentries and posts results to a status file.
5. Dispatched Beads Tracking (dispatched-beads.json)
- What: Manual JSON updates to track which beads have been dispatched
- Toil: Read/write JSON, dedup checks
- Automation opportunity: MEDIUM — Could use bead status field (
in_progress+owner) instead of a separate tracking file.
6. CI/CD & Deployment
- What: No formal CI/CD pipelines observed in workspace. Deployments appear manual.
- Toil: Unknown frequency, likely ad-hoc
- Automation opportunity: HIGH — Set up Tekton/GitHub Actions for repos. Add
sync-and-deploy.shif not present.
7. Cron Jobs
- Current state: No crontab entries for the
ubuntuuser - Automation opportunity: OpenClaw cron handles scheduled tasks, but system-level cron is unused — could offload exact-timing tasks there.
Recommendations (Priority Order)
| # | Action | Impact | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create bd-sync wrapper script (sync + push) | Eliminates repetitive git ceremony | 5 min |
| 2 | Auto-dispatch script for beads (keyword matcher) | Reduces heartbeat token burn ~50% | 2 hr |
| 3 | PR status checker cron script | Eliminates manual API polling | 1 hr |
| 4 | Auto-create daily memory file on first heartbeat | Removes boilerplate | 10 min |
| 5 | Archive old memory files (>14d) automatically | Reduces context clutter | 30 min |
| 6 | Eliminate dispatched-beads.json — use bead owner/status | Removes redundant tracking | 30 min |
| 7 | Set up CI/CD for key repos | Proper deployment pipeline | 4 hr |
Estimated Toil Reduction
Current estimated toil: ~2-3 hours/day of agent compute on repetitive tasks. With items 1-5 implemented: ~1 hour/day (50-60% reduction).