/etc/gitconfig shipped `helper = git-credential-hive-forge`. git prepends
`git-credential-` to any helper value that is not an absolute path, so
that resolves to `git-credential-git-credential-hive-forge`, which does
not exist -- no helper runs at all. The sibling github.nix has always used
the short form.
Measured rather than read off the docs, with the arms isolated from the
personal ~/.gitconfig:
helper = git-credential-hive-forge -> 0 credentials, and git prints
"'credential-git-credential-hive-forge' is not a git command"
helper = hive-forge -> 1 credential, clean stderr
The reason this survived: every long-lived agent has a personal
~/.gitconfig naming the helper by ABSOLUTE path, which git accepts, so
pushes keep working and the stderr line reads as noise. The system config
is masked exactly where someone would notice it and bites a fresh agent
that has no such file.
Nothing in the tree rendered a `[credential "<forge>"]` entry for an
agent, so every agent's `~/.gitconfig` accumulated one by hand, per
generation of forge address. Append-only, none ever removed, and after
the domain move the live one absent entirely:
[credential "http://forge.<old-hive>"]
[credential "http://localhost:3000"]
The absence of a writer is the defect. A value interpolated at eval time
follows a rename; a value captured into a mutable home file does not.
hive-c0re's own gitconfig already derives its scope from
`swarm.forge.domain` and moved correctly for exactly that reason.
What made it expensive to diagnose is that it does not present as a
credential problem. `git fetch` against a stale remote still succeeds --
the old name redirects and a public read needs no auth -- so the break
surfaces only at the first authenticated push, long after the move, as
`could not read Username for '<new host>'`. That names a host the agent
was never configured for, which reads like DNS or TLS.
Same class as the CI runner keeping its registered address, one tier
down.
The shape is `github.nix`'s, unchanged: a small credential helper that
reads the token from the agent's state file at invocation, with the
token PATH baked in rather than the value, because claude's Bash tool
runs in a minimal env that never sources /etc/set-environment.
`environment.etc."gitconfig"` is already bound by github.nix; the two
merge rather than collide because the option is `lines`. Verified by
eval with both modules defining it before this was written -- a silent
last-wins there would drop one integration's credentials and look
exactly like this bug again.
The option had a `http://localhost:3000` default, which is only ever
correct when the forge shares the caller's network namespace — inside an
agent's netns `localhost` is the agent, and the forge may well be on
another host. Making it *required* instead was worse: the flake's own
container configs are what hive-c0re extends per agent, so the value
they needed in order to evaluate became a second definition on every
agent and collided with the real one.
`null` resolves both. It is not a URL, so nothing can quietly talk to
the wrong machine, and it needs no placeholder anywhere: the bases
evaluate as they are, so nothing deployment-shaped sits on the config
agents inherit from. The units that would consume the URL — tea-login
and forge-avatar-sync — are simply not generated without one, making an
absent forge an absent integration rather than a misdirected one.
hive-forge-notify is unaffected: it reads HIVE_FORGE_URL from the
forwarded global environment, not from this option.
Verified:
agent-base/ruth evaluate with forge.url = null, zero failing assertions
bare base: tea_login_present = false, avatar_present = false,
notify_present = true
extended with a rendered URL: FORGE_URL=http://forge.real.test
Refs #2860
The default `http://localhost:3000` was a guess, and a guess that
evaluates is worse than one that doesn't: the forge may run on a
different host from the agents, and inside an agent's network namespace
`localhost` reaches the agent itself, not the forge. hive-c0re renders
this option into every agent's config from the host's `HIVE_FORGE_URL`,
which `hive-c0re.nix` sets unconditionally, so nothing legitimate was
relying on the default to be there.
Also tightens the URL assertion, which accepted `""`. That escape hatch
only existed because the default made the empty case unreachable; with
the default gone, `""` is exactly what a caller supplies when they have
nothing, so it now fails naming the option instead of silently building
a config that talks to nowhere.
Refs #2860
The poller was a `tokio::spawn` inside the `hive-agent` serve loop. It
never needed anything from that loop except a socket path, so being
in-process bought nothing and cost two things: a harness restart took
forge notifications down with it, and the whole forge/HTTP dependency
tree was linked into the serve-loop binary.
It is now `hive-forge-notify`, a per-agent daemon with its own systemd
unit, a sibling of `hive-bash-daemon` and `hive-matrix-daemon`. Same
contract as those two: it reaches the harness only by upserting todos on
the in-agent socket, and nowhere else.
The module moves verbatim (`notify.rs`) — the formatters, the activation
gates, the dedupe map and all 33 tests are unchanged. Only the socket
call sites are rewritten, onto a small local `todo_client` rather than
the harness's. That mirrors what both sibling daemons already do, and
the etiquette differs on purpose: the harness's client carries a 60s
backoff schedule sized to ride out a hive-c0re restart, which its
callers need because they have no retry of their own. This poller's two
call sites both sit inside the 30s poll loop and both treat a failure as
"leave the thread unread, try next tick", so the poll interval already
is the retry; a second backoff would only stack sleeps and delay the
rest of the batch.
The unit is `Restart=on-failure`, not `always`. An agent with no forge
account is a supported configuration and the poller reports it by
logging why and exiting 0 — under `always` that clean exit would be a
restart loop on every forge-less agent.
`forgejo-api`, `url` and `time` drop out of `hive-agent`'s dependencies
with the module.
Also corrects docs that outlived the code they described: the persisted
`forge_cursor` field is long gone (forge's own read-state is the durable
record of what has been delivered), but `docs/persistence.md` and the
`harness_state` module docs still documented it as live.
