hyperhive/docs/integrations/github.md

# GitHub accounts

Give an agent a managed GitHub identity — a `gh` CLI and `git push` over
HTTPS, both authenticated by an operator-supplied personal access token
(PAT) — so it can run GitHub API calls and push commits without any manual
`gh auth login`.

Provisioning is UI-driven, mirroring the dashboard side of the
[matrix account](matrix.md) flow: paste a PAT into the agent's credentials
tab and it works. No per-agent nix declaration, no rebuild — the token is
injected into the agent's state dir out of band.

## Enabling

The integration is **on by default** for every agent (`hyperhive.github.enable
= true`), inert until a PAT is provisioned. There is nothing per-agent to
declare — an agent gains GitHub simply by having a PAT written to its token
file.

To turn it off for the whole hive, set the host option:

```nix
services.hyperhive.github.enable = false;
```

hive-c0re's meta-flake renderer then injects `hyperhive.github.enable = false`
into every agent, so no agent ships the `gh` wrapper or credential helper.
(`hyperhive.github.enable` also exists per-agent for completeness, but the
hive-wide host switch is the intended control.)

github.com only. The token **value** never touches nix — it is written to
`<state>/github-token` separately (see [Provisioning](#provisioning)).

## Provisioning

The PAT is operator-supplied. The primary path is the **dashboard
credentials tab** (github sub-tab): paste the PAT for an agent and submit
(`POST /api/github-account`). There is also a CLI path for
recovery/scripting:

```sh
hivectl github set-token <agent> --token-stdin   # paste the PAT on stdin (preferred)
hivectl github set-token <agent> --token <pat>    # inline (visible in shell history)
```

Either path has hive-c0re delegate the write to hive-priv, which stores the
file `0600` owned by the agent (so the container can read it) — the same
credential-injection path as forge/matrix tokens. See
[hivectl → GitHub](../tools/hivectl.md#github).

## Security

- Use a **dedicated bot account**, never a human's.
- Mint a **minimally-scoped PAT** — only the repos/scopes the agent's
  workflow needs. Agents have passwordless sudo, so a compromised or
  hallucinating agent can act as the account within the token's scopes;
  scope is the real blast-radius limiter, and the container boundary is
  the enforcement. See [security.md](../trust-boundary/security.md).

Everything below this point is implementation detail (how the agent
actually uses the token, and the notification poller's internals).

## How the agent uses it

When enabled, the container gets:

- **A `gh` wrapper** on `PATH` (shadowing the raw `gh`) that exports
  `GH_TOKEN` from the token file at invocation, then execs real `gh`. So
  `gh pr create`, `gh api …`, etc. just work — `gh` derives the identity
  from the token.
- **A git credential helper** (`git-credential-hive-github`), wired via a
  host-scoped `/etc/gitconfig` entry for `https://github.com`, so
  `git push https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>` authenticates as
  `x-access-token` + the PAT (GitHub ignores the username for PAT auth).
  Host-scoped, so it never touches the forge (`localhost:3000`) or any
  other remote.

Both scripts read the token from `<state>/github-token` **at invocation
time**, so a PAT written (or rotated) mid-session takes effect immediately
— no container rebuild or restart. Until the file exists, `gh` / `git push`
simply fail unauthenticated. The token path is baked into the scripts at
build time (not read from an env var), because claude's Bash tool runs in a
minimal environment that wouldn't carry one.

## Notifications

`hive-github-notify` polls github.com for the agent, turning each unread
notification thread into a todo. It is a **separate binary and a
separate systemd unit** from the internal forge's poller
(`hive-forge-notify`, see [forge.md](forge.md#notification-poller-hive-forge-notifysrcnotifyrs)),
installed by `nix/agent-modules/github.nix` under
`hyperhive.github.enable`. Both binaries ship from the one
`hive-forge-notify` derivation, so the unit is a second `ExecStart`
path, not a new package.

Two units rather than one daemon with two loops, because it puts the
decision in nix: a hive built without this module has **no github poller
in its closure at all**, which is what makes GitHub access separable
rather than merely switched off. It is also why this is not a cargo
feature — a feature would unify across the workspace and cost every
crate its build cache.

At runtime the poller needs the PAT above. No PAT, no polling: the unit
logs why and exits 0, which is why it is `Restart = on-failure` and
never `always` — a clean exit on a PAT-less agent must not become a
restart loop.

Forgejo's notifications API is modelled on GitHub's, so one tolerant
parse serves both: `id`, `repository.full_name`,
`subject {title,url,latest_comment_url}` and `updated_at` line up field
for field. The two real differences are absorbed by lenient
deserializers — GitHub sends the thread id as a *string* where Forgejo
sends a number, and says `PullRequest` where Forgejo says `Pull`. Todo
keys are prefixed `gh:<id>` so a github thread id cannot collide with a
forge one.

Two host differences worth knowing before touching this code:

- **Auth scheme, not just value.** Forgejo takes
  `Authorization: token <t>`; GitHub wants `Bearer <t>` plus `Accept:
  application/vnd.github+json`, `X-GitHub-Api-Version` and a
  `User-Agent`. Sending Forgejo's form to GitHub does not error — it
  authenticates as *nobody* and silently drops to the unauthenticated
  rate limit. The cheap way to tell the two apart is the rate-limit
  header: `x-ratelimit-remaining` near 5000 is an authenticated user,
  near 60 is anonymous.
- **GitHub sets the cadence.** It returns `X-Poll-Interval` (60s in
  practice, slower than our own tick) and rate-limits callers who ignore
  it, so the loop re-arms to the server's interval whenever that is
  *slower* than ours. A hint faster than our own tick is not a reason to
  poll harder.

⚠️ **This needs the `notifications` scope on the PAT.** A token minted
for `gh` + `git push` typically carries `repo` only, which is enough to
push and open PRs but **not** to read the notification stream (nor to
mark a thread read, which is the same scope). A PAT without it doesn't
break anything: the poller logs the refusal and stays quiet, and the
agent simply never gets GitHub wakes. If an agent's GitHub
notifications never arrive, check the token's scopes first — the
symptom is silence, not an error.