hyperhive/CLAUDE.md

hyperhive — claude entry point

Hey claude. This is your starting page. The detailed docs live in docs/ and are written for humans + you both — read them when you need depth on a subsystem. This file is the index.

• High-level project intro: README.md.
• Open work + backlog: the forge issue tracker at $HIVE_FORGE_URL/hyperhive/hyperhive/issues. Read the host out of the env var — inside an agent container localhost is the agent, not the forge, so a hardcoded loopback address fails to connect.
• Operator/agent trust-boundary design: docs/boundary.md (area/ops issues for the deployment/gateway/privsep work — the separator is a slash; --label area:ops matches nothing and silently returns unfiltered results, which reads like a backlog rather than like an error).
• Agent trust model (trust boundary, prompt-injection threat model, capability = accepted risk), credential isolation + sandbox threat model: docs/security.md.

Repo map

One line per crate / top-level dir. Each module's authoritative, always-current description lives in its own //! doc-comment — grep/read the module when you need detail. This index is kept deliberately lean: it auto-loads into every turn's context, and a hand-maintained per-file tree drifts out of sync with the code.

Rust workspace (Cargo.toml members)

• hive-c0re/ — host daemon (runs as the unprivileged hive-core user). src/main.rs is the hive-c0re binary — daemon-only (serve + the periodic vacuum/sweep loops); the operator CLI lives in the separate hivectl crate, which talks to the daemon over the host admin socket. Owns the sqlite broker, approval + reminder + schedule queues, the meta flake, lifecycle (nixos-container shellouts), gateway / forge / matrix provisioning, per-container stats, and the axum operator dashboard (dashboard.rs). Largest crate.
• hivectl/ — standalone operator CLI (hivectl binary). Talks to the hive-c0re daemon over the host admin socket (hive-host-sock wire types) — does NOT link hive-c0re. Full, always-current verb reference (CI-enforced against the clap tree, see docs/conventions.md): docs/tools/hivectl-cli.md.
• hive-agent/, hive-agent-mcp/ — in-container harness, two sibling crates for every agent (not a single hive-ag3nt/ dir — that's the runtime/binary-family nickname, not a directory).
• hive-agent/ — the serve-loop binary: turn-loop policy layer (turn.rs) over the hive-claude driver, per-agent web UI (web_ui/ module dir), event + turn-stats sqlite sinks, login flow, system-prompt renderer.
• hive-agent-mcp/ — the embedded MCP server (long-lived streamable-http listener, hive-mcp-http systemd unit) + its claude launch-config layer (tool-group/capability → --allowedTools, --mcp-config render).
• hive-jobq/ — job-DAG scheduler, extracted from hive-c0re's in-tree job_queue as a domain-agnostic library. Runtime-only — nothing writes the graph to disk; hive-c0re starts empty each boot and re-derives desired state via the reconcile sweep, so node ids and timestamps are stable within a run, not across restarts. One shared graph for the whole system (not a DAG per job); enqueuing inserts a self-contained sub-DAG and returns the ids of the nodes the job asked for, in the order it named them. Generic over the node payload N and the resource name R; resource deps are named counting semaphores acquired all-or-nothing at node start. hive-c0re's remaining job_queue/ module is the c0re-specific layer over this crate, and is being removed in favour of it — new scheduler-shaped code belongs here, not there.
• hive-jobq-wire/ — wire types for serving a hive-jobq graph to a viewer, plus the WireNode / WireResource traits a host implements to say how its N and R render. Deliberately not part of hive-jobq: that crate is logic, this is presentation, and folded together they remix. GraphWire::wire_snapshot is blanket-implemented for any Graph<N, R> whose parameters implement both — so a payload that has never said how it displays cannot reach a viewer at all.
• hive-screen-mcp/ — stdio MCP bridge for GUI agents (hyperhive.gui.enable): screenshot via grim, type_text / key_press via wtype (Wayland virtual-keyboard protocol), and mouse_move / mouse_click as RFB pointer events to the local neatvnc server. All userspace, no daemon of its own.
• hive-priv/ — minimal root privileged-helper, socket-activated at /run/hive/priv.sock; performs the few root operations (bind-mount edits, nsenter) the unprivileged hive-c0re delegates to it. See docs/boundary.md.
• hive-forge/ — hive-forge Forgejo CLI wrapper; one module per verb under src/verbs/.
• hive-forge-notify/ — per-agent notification poller daemons; turns unread notification threads into todos on the harness's in-agent socket. Two binaries from one crate: hive-forge-notify (the hive's Forgejo) and hive-github-notify (github.com, installed by nix/agent-modules/github.nix). Was a task inside the hive-agent serve loop; own process since it needs nothing else from the harness.
• hive-matrix-mcp/ — per-agent matrix-sdk daemon (hive-matrix-daemon); serves its MCP tools (send_message, read_room, …) directly over streamable-http (no stdio bridge), same shape as hive-bash-mcp.
• hive-bash-mcp/ — per-agent bash-task runner daemon (hive-bash-daemon); serves its MCP tools (run/status/kill) directly over streamable-http (no stdio bridge), writes task files under /harness/bash-tasks/, and records the favorite-tools bash_commands stat into turn-stats.sqlite.
• hive-sh4re/ — shared wire types (Agent / Manager request + response, Message, Approval, HelperEvent) used across the unix sockets. Host-admin-socket and hive-priv-socket wire types have been split out into their own crates (below) so hivectl and hive-priv don't need to pull in the rest of hive-sh4re.
• hive-host-sock/ — wire types for the host admin socket (/run/hyperhive/host.sock), the protocol hivectl speaks to hive-c0re. Split out of hive-sh4re so a standalone hivectl only depends on this protocol crate, not the whole daemon crate.
• hive-priv-sock/ — wire types for the hive-priv privileged-helper socket (/run/hive/priv.sock), shared by hive-priv (server) and hive-c0re (client). Also split out of hive-sh4re.
• hive-core-agent-sock/ — wire types for the host-served per-agent
  • manager socket (/run/hive/mcp.sock), the protocol an agent's harness speaks to hive-c0re. Same split rationale as the two above; the shared payload types it references stay in hive-sh4re.
• hive-agent-sock/ — wire types for the in-agent socket, served by the harness to in-container producers — matrix / bash MCP daemons and forge_notify are the built-in ones, but any user-configured MCP server can push todos here too, nothing restricts the subsystem set. Carries the loose-ends-v2 todo ops plus harness-local reminders. ⚠️ Distinct from hive-core-agent-sock above: this socket never leaves the container and hive-c0re is not in the path at all — no broker round-trip, no long-poll, no marker files.
• hive-types/ — zero-dependency (bar serde) leaf crate holding the foundational newtypes, chiefly Ident (1–63 chars of [a-z0-9-], constructed only via the validating parser). Lets every wire-type crate and both binaries type their agent-name fields as a validated ident and get serde-checked parsing at the socket boundary, without coupling to hive-sh4re.
• hive-sock-client/ — the shared JSON-line-over-unix-socket client every daemon uses to talk to a hyperhive socket. Generic over the request/response types, so the host-served control socket and the harness's in-agent socket both use it with their own wire-type crates. Retry is a policy value (Retry::None for callers already inside a poll loop, Retry::RideOutRestart for callers with no natural retry), and the response is either decoded (request) or drained (notify). Deliberately separate from the *-sock crates — those stay dependency-free wire types.
• hive-metric/ — small CLI to push a single labeled metric to the OTEL collector via the OpenTelemetry Rust SDK / OTLP HTTP exporter.
• swarm-controller/ — swarm-level daemon, opt-in per host (services.hyperhive.deploy.controller). Where hive-c0re owns the agents on one host, this owns what is true across hives; a swarm runs one of them, so most hives leave it off. Serves HTTP over a unix socket the gateway's nginx proxies to — ⚠️ the socket's directory is its access control; the constraint that governs it is in the crate's README, and a unit test pins the path.
• swarmctl/ — swarm-level operator CLI, installed by the swarm-controller module on the host that runs the daemon. Runs as root and acts directly — no socket, no HTTP route, no priv helper; the crate's README records why the rootless shape was examined and rejected. Does not link swarm-controller, mirroring hivectl ÷ hive-c0re. ⚠️ Its user store is authelia's own users.yml, read and written in place — one file, shared with swarm-authelia-bridge; see that crate's README for what both writers must uphold. Full, always-current verb reference (CI-enforced against the clap tree, same pattern as hivectl's — see docs/conventions.md): docs/tools/swarmctl-cli.md.

External dependencies with no directory here

• hive-claude — reusable, app-agnostic driver for headless claude --print: spawns the CLI, streams + classifies stream-json, parses per-turn Telemetry, and drives a durable self-compacting InfiniteSession (name + SessionStore + CompactionPolicy). Uses thiserror (it's a library); the hive-* binaries consume it with anyhow. ⚠️ Its own repo, not a workspace member — consumed as a dependency in the root Cargo.toml, so there is no hive-claude/ directory to read and grep here will not find it.

Other top-level dirs

• frontend/ — npm workspaces → static dashboard + per-agent UI dist, built hermetically by nix/packages/frontend.nix. Packages: shared (terminal pane + Catppuccin palette), dashboard (the operator SPA), agent (the default per-container UI), swarm-ui (swarm-level UI shell — Preact + wouter + TypeScript + JSX, project- bootstrap scope; packaged separately by nix/packages/swarm-ui.nix, not bundled into packages.default's closure — see that file).
• nix/ — host-modules/ (the host stack: hyperhive core options, hive-{c0re,priv,forge,gateway,matrix,network,tls,ci}, otel, swarm), agent-modules/ (the per-agent harness feature modules), templates/{agent,ruth}.nix (container entry points), packages/ (flake package outputs), docs/ (the options-doc derivation), plus sources.nix / rust.nix / checks.nix / devshell.nix / treefmt.nix behind the thin flake.nix.
• docs/ — subsystem reference docs (see Reading paths below).
• branding/, scripts/ — static assets + helper scripts.

Reading paths

Pick the doc that matches your task. None depend on the others — read them à la carte.

• "How do I bring a fresh hive online (first-run hivectl bootstrap)?" → docs/setup.md.
• "What does the dashboard look like?" → docs/web-ui.md (index; sub-pages: shape, dashboard, agent).
• "How does the per-agent terminal classify + colour events?" → docs/terminal-rendering.md.
• "How does claude get its prompt and what tools does it have?" → docs/turn-loop/ (index: the loop, binary shape, turn outcomes; sub-pages: claude-invocation, config, mcp).
• "How do config changes flow from manager to operator to container?" → docs/approvals.md.
• "What state survives destroy / purge / restart?" → docs/persistence.md.
• "Naming, commit style, wire protocol, the data-async pattern." → docs/conventions.md.
• "Why does the nspawn flag look like that?" → docs/gotchas.md.
• "What nginx vhosts does the gateway serve? How does matrix discovery work?" → docs/gateway.md.
• "How do per-agent forge accounts work? What does forge_notify poll + how does it format wake messages?" → docs/forge.md.
• "What verbs does hive-forge support? How do I post a comment, upload an attachment, manage subscriptions?" → docs/tools/forge.md.
• "What does hivectl do? How do I provision a forge/matrix account, manage gateway users, restart containers, or drop into an agent shell?" → docs/tools/hivectl.md.
• "How does the matrix-tuwunel container work? What about fluffychat-web and per-agent matrix accounts?" → docs/matrix.md.
• "How do I give an agent a GitHub account (gh + git push)? How is the PAT injected?" → docs/github.md.
• "How does DNS resolution work in agent containers? What's the bridge network for?" → docs/network.md.
• "How do I connect two hives into a swarm? How do I declare peer hives and configure TLS trust?" → docs/swarm/.
• "Where do agent snapshots go? How does the swarm's btrfs receive endpoint authenticate a pushing hive, and what does a snapshot actually contain?" → docs/snapshot-store.md.
• "What is the job queue, as a general idea?" → docs/jobq.md (operator-facing, no hive-c0re specifics).
• "How does the rebuild queue work? What are the concrete step kinds, queue sources, scheduler internals?" → docs/coordinator.md.
• "How does the CI runner work? What's the auto-registration flow?" → docs/ci.md.
• "What is /knowledge? How does the hive-wide knowledge repo sync, and how do I contribute a document?" → docs/knowledge.md.
• "How do I export Claude Code metrics (tokens, cost, tool calls) to a Prometheus/Grafana collector? What OTEL options are available?" → docs/observability.md.
• "What does a PR review verdict actually gate? Should a reviewer wait for CI before approving? What does arming auto-merge commit an operator to?" → docs/pr-review-gate.md.

Conventions & process

The docs below own the details — this section just points at them.

• Commit style, naming, identity, reconcile verb: → docs/conventions.md.
• Never add #[allow(clippy::…)] — fix the lint instead (extract a helper, add backticks, etc.). Details + worked examples: → docs/conventions.md.
• NixOS / nspawn quirks (bind mounts, conf flags, etc.): → docs/gotchas.md.
• Turn loop, sentinels (rate-limit, auth-failed), context window: → docs/turn-loop/.
• Two-step spawn, approval flow, flake.lock validation: → docs/approvals.md.
• Pre-push lint hook (catches tracker-tag and comment-block failures before CI does — install once per clone): ln -sf ../../scripts/pre-push .git/hooks/pre-push