hyperhive/docs/approvals.md

Approvals + helper events

The approval queue is hyperhive's pivot: nothing that changes the shape of an agent (its config, whether it exists) happens without an operator click. The submitting agent — any agent with the approvals tool group, which manages the config of its direct children (the root agent for top-level agents; a sub-manager for its own subtree) — is the policy gate in front of that queue; helper events are how it stays informed about what happens after a decision lands.

For operators

Every add/remove/change to an agent lands on your dashboard's Y3R C4LL tab (or hivectl approvals pending / approve <id> from the CLI) before it takes effect. What you'll see, and what to do with it:

• Config change (MergeConfigPr) — an agent proposed a change to another agent's config (or its own, via a sub-manager) as a forge pull request. Review the diff on the forge — the dashboard card links straight to it, same as reviewing any other PR. Approving triggers the deploy automatically: hive-c0re re-verifies the PR hasn't moved since you looked at it, evaluates it (a dry run, nothing applied yet), merges it, and rebuilds the container. If anything in that chain fails, the change rolls back automatically — the agent stays on its last-good config, no recovery action needed from you.
• New agent (InitConfig then Spawn) — creating a brand-new agent is two approvals. InitConfig creates the config repo and seeds it from a template; Spawn creates the container from that config. Tailoring the template first is not a separate mechanism — it's the config-change flow above, a PR you review like any other. Every later change goes through the config-change flow above — there's no repeat "spawn" for an existing agent.
• Meta/flake update (UpdateMetaInputs) — an agent asked to bump one or more Nix flake inputs (or all of them). Approving runs the update and commits the lock change; it doesn't rebuild anything by itself.
• Scheduled prompt (SchedulePrompt) — an agent asked to schedule a message to one or more inboxes at a future time. You can also add schedules yourself directly from the SCH3DUL3S tab, which skips this approval step entirely — the gate here is specifically for an agent asking to schedule something, not for you doing it.

Don't want to approve something? Deny it (DENY on the dashboard card, or hivectl approvals deny <id>) — nothing runs. Either way the submitting agent is always notified their request was denied; what's optional is only the reason text, which you can add on the dashboard's prompt (cancelling that prompt aborts the whole deny, not just the reason) but not from the CLI. Denying is final: a denied approval can't be re-approved later, the agent has to submit a fresh one (a new PR, a new request).

Everything below this point is the implementation detail behind that flow.

End-to-end approval flow

Config changes flow through a forge pull request on the agent's agent-configs/<name> repo — the same surface agents use for code PRs. There is no bespoke MCP tool for config changes: opening the PR IS the request.

1. The submitting agent (the child's parent, holding the approvals tool group) clones agent-configs/<name>, edits it there (any tracked path, but agent.nix is the contract entry point), commits with its own git identity, and pushes a branch + opens a PR with hive-forge — the same way it would change any other repo. The bind-mounted /agents/<name>/config/ is a copy for reading a config, not the tree to edit: authoring in place there produces no PR and no approval. (It is currently mounted read-write, which is a defect tracked separately, not an authoring path.) Branch protection (push/merge whitelist = core, approvals whitelist = operator team; see "Forge mirror" and #1787) makes the agent a write collaborator that cannot merge its own config PR.

2. hive-c0re's /webhook/config-pr endpoint receives the Forgejo pull_request event (opened / synchronized / reopened) and queues a MergeConfigPr approval; a poll fallback catches any missed webhook. The approval row stores the PR number (commit_ref) and the PR head sha at queue time (fetched_sha — the "reviewed" sha). If the PR head later moves, the stale approval is superseded by a fresh one pinned to the new head, so the operator always reviews what will actually deploy.

3. The operator reviews the PR on the forge (native diff, threaded comments, CI status) and sees a matching card on the dashboard with a "review PR on forge" deep link. They click ◆ APPR0VE (or hivectl approvals approve <id> on the CLI) once satisfied.

4. On approve, a deploy DAG runs three phases under a resource-holding DeployWindow root (see Queue templates below):

   • MergeVerify re-reads the live PR head and aborts if it drifted from the reviewed fetched_sha (the submitter must push again, which queues a fresh approval); then fetches that head into the applied repo and eval-verifies it — a flake eval on a throwaway checkout. This is the trust gate: it relies on c0re's own eval, not on any in-repo (agent-forgeable) signal like a CI status. Nothing is mutated in this phase, so a rejection here leaves the forge and the applied repo exactly as they were.
   • DeployApply parks the pre-merge applied/main in refs/hyperhive/rollback/<approval-id>, then fast-forward-merges the reviewed head to the forge config repo's main (this IS the merge — a core-authenticated ff-merge pinned to the reviewed sha, so a moved PR head can't substitute bytes), and runs the deploy proper (deploy_applied_target): ff applied/main, two-phase meta deploy, container rebuild. On success it drops the rollback ref and plants deployed/<id>.
   • DeployTail runs on every outcome, including a cancel-cascade. If the rollback ref survived, the deploy never confirmed good: it rolls applied/main back, resyncs the working tree, and aborts the staged meta lock, so the agent stays on its last-good tree. Then it mirrors the config repo (and its new deploy tag) to the forge.

   The rollback state lives in a git ref, not a local variable, on purpose: hive-c0re can restart between the apply and the tail, and the tail still has to know what to undo when it does.

5. HelperEvent::ApprovalResolved (and Rebuilt) land in the submitting agent's inbox via notify_submitter, carrying both the canonical sha and the terminal tag (the approval row carries a submitter column recording the agent the change is for).

Withdrawing a pending approval

The submitting agent can call cancel_loose_end(kind: "approval", id) to withdraw an approval that hasn't been acted on yet. The row transitions to ApprovalStatus::Cancelled (distinct from Denied/Failed), the dashboard pulls the card out of the pending pane, and ApprovalResolved { status: "cancelled" } fires on the root agent + dashboard channels. Approvals that have already been approved/denied/failed return an error — the resolution is final once the operator (or a lifecycle failure) acted on the row.

The socket refuses the approval kind with a clear error for any agent that lacks the approvals tool group: only an agent with that group submits approvals (for its direct children), so an agent without it has nothing of its own to withdraw.

InitConfig approvals create a brand-new agent's config repo. On approve, hive-c0re seeds it with a default agent.nix template and pushes a todo (push_todo_submitter) into the submitting agent's in-container store. The operator then spawns the agent (the Spawn approval / ◆ R3QU3ST SP4WN button), which creates the container from that config.

Changing what the template seeded is not a special case: like every later change, it's a PR on that config repo (MergeConfigPr), made from a clone, reviewed and approved by the operator. The PR flow is the one path — an operator can equally drive both steps herself through the web UI or the forge.

Approval kinds (wire shapes)

ApprovalKind carries five variants; each maps to a different commit_ref encoding because that field is overloaded as the kind-specific payload carrier.

• MergeConfigPr — the config-change flow. Triggered automatically: when an agent opens (or force-pushes) a PR on its agent-configs/<agent> forge repo, hive-c0re's /webhook/config-pr endpoint receives the Forgejo pull_request event and queues this approval row. No MCP tool call needed — the forge PR IS the request. commit_ref stores the PR number (decimal), and fetched_sha is the PR head sha at queue time (the "reviewed" sha). On approve, the deploy DAG's MergeVerify phase re-reads the live PR head and aborts if it drifted from fetched_sha (submitter must push again to re-trigger), then fetches that head into the applied repo and eval-verifies it; DeployApply fast-forward-merges the forge config repo's main to it (the merge) and runs deploy_applied_target; DeployTail compensates on failure. Never a first spawn.
• Spawn — direct container creation from the agent's config repo. commit_ref is empty. Submitted via HostRequest::RequestSpawn (operator-gated, the ◆ R3QU3ST SP4WN dashboard button + hivectl agent <name> request-create CLI). The host-level HostRequest::Spawn variant bypasses the approval queue entirely — privileged-context use only (operator on the host shell, test scripts, one-off recoveries; hivectl agent <name> create). This is the canonical first-spawn: a new agent's InitConfig seeds its config repo, the submitting agent customises it, then the operator spawns to create the container. Subsequent config changes go through a MergeConfigPr PR.
• InitConfig — commit_ref is empty; the variant just gates "seed the proposed repo with the default template" against operator approval. Step 1 of the two-step spawn flow above.
• UpdateMetaInputs — commit_ref stores the JSON-encoded inputs array ("[]" = all inputs, "[\"nixpkgs\"]" = just nixpkgs, etc.). agent field is set to the requesting root agent. On approve hive-c0re runs nix flake update [inputs...] on the meta flake and commits the resulting lock changes.
• SchedulePrompt — commit_ref stores the JSON-encoded SchedulePromptPayload (target list, body, schedule) so the approval row carries the full submission verbatim. On approve hive-c0re inserts a row into scheduled_prompts with source = approval:<id>; the worker fans the body out as inbox messages to each target at the scheduled time, recurring when interval_seconds is set.

Scheduled prompts (submit paths)

Two ways a row lands in scheduled_prompts:

• Operator-direct (source = "operator"): the operator adds a schedule through the dashboard form. Lands in the table immediately, no approval gate — operator action is already the trust boundary.
• Agent-requested (source = "approval:<id>"): an agent submits a RequestSchedulePrompt through its MCP socket (the request_schedule_prompt tool, scheduling group). An ApprovalKind::SchedulePrompt row is queued; on approve, hive-c0re inserts the schedule row with source = approval:<id> so the audit trail points back at the operator decision (above).

No self-target shortcut: even agent-self schedules need approval. The existing remind MCP tool stays the quick self-wake path (no approval, lands directly in the agent's own inbox); this module is the bigger, multi-recipient, operator-visible thing.

Scheduled prompt worker (catch-up clamp)

When hive-c0re comes back from being down, the worker sees rows whose next_fire_at_unix is well in the past. For recurring rows that would mean firing N delayed pulses in a row — spammy and useless. Instead the worker fires once per row and bumps next_fire_at_unix to the next interval slot ≥ now, recording how many cycles were skipped in last_result (per-target). Operators see "fired late, caught up from 17 skipped" instead of 17 wake-up storms.

One-shot rows fire once (if past due, on the next worker pass) and are deleted by the worker; recurring rows survive until cancelled.

targets is its own table (scheduled_prompt_targets) so partial cancellation flips a single row and the dashboard can show last-fired / last-result per recipient. Cancelling every target reaps the parent row on the next worker pass.

Scheduled prompt delivery: todo, not a broker message

An agent target's delivery is push_todo (Coordinator::push_todo, docs/coordinator.md covers the mechanism generally), not a broker Message — a scheduled prompt wakes its target with a todo instead of driving an immediate turn, by design. key = "schedule:<id>" per target drives push_todo's own upsert-by-key dedup: a re-fire of the same schedule against a target that hasn't reviewed the last one collapses into that one todo instead of stacking up.

operator is the one exception — it's a valid schedule target but has no in-container todo inbox, so it keeps the original broker Message path (the dashboard mirrors to == operator into its own pane, same as before).

Missing-target failure

When a target name doesn't resolve to a known agent (container destroyed, operator typo, etc.) the worker:

1. Records last_result = "no such agent: <name>" on the per-target row.
2. Sends a single advisory Message from system to operator naming the schedule, target, and reason. This one stays a Message regardless of target type — it's a to-operator advisory about a broken schedule, not the schedule's own delivery.
3. Continues fanning out to the other live targets.

Transient broker errors (sqlite lock contention, etc.) get the same last_result annotation plus a tracing::warn, and then:

• Recurring rows re-arm to the next interval slot — the retry self-heals on the next worker pass.
• One-shot rows are deleted unconditionally after their single fan-out pass; a broker error on a one-shot is not retried (the operator advisory and last_result are the only audit trail).

Reminder delivery: file-path semantics

A reminder may carry a file_path (the agent-visible path inside its container, e.g. /agents/<name>/state/foo.md). On delivery hive-c0re:

1. Translates the container path to the host path (/var/lib/hyperhive/agents/<name>/state/foo.md) so c0re can write from outside the container.
2. Validates the path: rejects anything outside the agent's own state subtree, containing .. (path traversal), or with an empty relative tail. On rejection the write is skipped and the original message is delivered inline with a warning — the reminder still fires.
3. Defends against symlink escape: after create_dir_all, the parent dir is canonicalized and re-verified to live under the agent's host state root. The final file is opened with O_NOFOLLOW | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC so an existing symlink at the basename cannot redirect the write to an arbitrary host path.
4. Writes the body to disk and delivers a short pointer message in its place, keeping the agent's inbox / wake-prompt small while the bulky payload is read out of band.

Atomicity of the inbox INSERT + reminders.sent_at UPDATE is handled inside Broker::deliver_reminders_batch; the scheduler only computes the body strings before calling it.

Destroy semantics

HostRequest::Destroy { name, purge } is the lifecycle tear-down, not an approval. Stops + removes the nspawn container, drops the systemd drop-in, fails any pending approvals. Persistent state (proposed/applied repos, claude credentials, /state/ notes) is kept by default — recreating the agent with the same name reuses prior config + login. With purge = true the agent's /var/lib/hyperhive/{agents,applied}/<name>/ trees are also wiped (config history + creds + notes gone forever). The root/bootstrap container is destroyable like any other — hive-c0re recreates it on the next startup if it's absent, so destroying it is transient.

Meta flake

The hive-c0re-owned repo at /var/lib/hyperhive/meta/ declares one flake input per agent (agent-<n>.url = "git+http://<forge>/agent-configs/<n>.git") and one nixosConfigurations.<n> output per agent. Each output wraps inputs.agent-<n>.nixosModules.default with the identity + HIVE_PORT / HIVE_LABEL / HIVE_DASHBOARD_PORT injection module. Containers run against --flake /var/lib/hyperhive/meta#<n>.

The declared input url is the agent's forge config repo (the same agent-configs/<n> the config-PR flow lands approved changes on), so the meta flake references a reviewable, reproducible source rather than a local checkout. hive-c0re authenticates that git+http fetch via a git credential helper that reads the live forge-core token — no token in the url or the lock. The deploy and manual-rebuild paths, however, do not re-lock from the forge: they --override-input agent-<n> git+file:///var/lib/hyperhive/applied/<n>, locking the exact config that verify_commit gated and applied/<n>/main was fast-forwarded to. That keeps a deploy/rebuild reproducible and independent of forge reachability — rebuilds fire on crash-restart and meta bumps, not just config PRs — while the declared url stays the forge. sync_agents re-renders + re-locks the persistent input; a plain nix flake lock leaves an existing applied override in place (it only re-locks when the declared url itself changes), so the forge-declared / applied-deployed split is stable.

Per-deploy lock flow (two-phase), spread across the deploy subtree's nodes — each phase is its own node, so the queue can show which one is running and a restart resumes at node granularity:

1. DeployApply → meta::prepare_deploy(name) runs nix flake lock --update-input agent-<n> without committing. Working tree of meta now points the input at applied/<n>/main (which the deploy already fast-forwarded to the reviewed PR head).
2. The rebuild subgraph DeployApply grows into the DAG builds and swaps the container (AgentWindow bracing Prebuild → StopForUpdate → Swap → RebuildBookkeeping, plus Reconcile). Nix evaluates against the staged lock.
3. On success — FinalizeDeploy drops the rollback ref, plants deployed/<id>, then meta::finalize_deploy(name, sha, "deployed/ <id>") stages flake.lock and commits with deploy <n> deployed/<id> <sha12>. Meta's git log gains one entry per successful deploy.
4. On failure — the DeployTail node runs meta::abort_deploy() (git restore flake.lock) so the meta history shows only successes; the failure stays as an annotated failed/<id> tag in applied/<n>. The tail runs on every outcome, so this also covers a hive-c0re restart mid-build: the staged lock is dropped and applied/main rolled back from the parked refs/hyperhive/rollback/<id>.

Single-phase variants exist for paths without rollback semantics: meta::lock_update_for_rebuild(name) for the manual ↻ R3BU1LD button (commits if the lock changed) and meta::lock_update_hyperhive() for the auto-update flake-rev bump (one shot before per-agent rebuilds, commits if the lock changed).

meta::sync_agents(hive: &HiveEnv, agents: &[AgentSpec]) — hive carries hyperhive_flake, dashboard_port, and the rest of the per-hive config — is the idempotent reconciler called by spawn, destroy, rebuild, and the startup migration. Renders flake.nix from the agent list; if it differs from disk, runs nix flake lock + commits as regenerate meta flake (or seed meta from N agent(s) on the very first call).

The root agent has /meta RO-bound inside its container: git -C /meta log --oneline is the swarm-wide deploy log, cat /meta/flake.lock | jq '.nodes["agent-<n>"].locked' resolves which sha each agent is pinned at right now. Dashboard surfaces the same info as a deployed:<sha12> chip per container row.

Two repos per agent

/var/lib/hyperhive/agents/<name>/config/    proposed — parent mount is RO
└── <anything>                              # any files the submitting
                                            # agent wants in the commit.
                                            # agent.nix is the
                                            # convention entry
                                            # point; flake.nix is
                                            # tracked boilerplate
                                            # (submitting agent doesn't
                                            # edit it).

/var/lib/hyperhive/applied/<name>/          applied — core-only
├── .git/                                   # tag-rich history
├── flake.nix                               # tracked, fixed
│                                           # boilerplate exporting
│                                           # nixosModules.default
├── agent.nix                               # working tree of main
└── <other committed files>                 # also tracked

/var/lib/hyperhive/meta/                    swarm-wide flake — core
├── .git/                                   # one commit per successful
│                                           # deploy
├── flake.nix                               # generated from agent set
└── flake.lock                              # pins each agent's sha

Why two physical repos: the submitting agent's /agents/<n>/config/ is RW — a buggy or hostile agent can git clean -fdx its own proposed tree. The applied repo is never bind-mounted (except the read-only .git exposure described below) so a destructive move inside the container cannot reach it.

The container's --flake ref is /var/lib/hyperhive/meta#<name> (see "Meta flake" above). The agent's own applied/<n>/flake.nix is a fixed boilerplate that exports nixosModules.default = import ./agent.nix; the meta flake imports that module and wraps it with identity + HIVE_PORT / HIVE_LABEL / HIVE_DASHBOARD_PORT.

Tag state machine

Each deploy leaves a tag on the underlying commit inside the applied repo:

Tag	When	Annotated?
deployed/<id>	rebuild succeeded — main ff's here	no
failed/<id>	rebuild failed	yes (body = error)

deployed/0 is planted at first spawn. applied/main is always the latest deployed/*. A failed/ tree stays browsable forever — git log --tags in the applied repo is the audit trail. A denied or failed config PR carries no extra state on the forge side: the PR stays open, and the submitter pushes again (or closes it) to retry.

Dispatch via the job queue

Long-running approval work — MergeConfigPr, UpdateMetaInputs, Spawn — runs as a DAG on the global job queue (docs/coordinator.md::Job queue), submitted by the approval handler rather than run inline:

ApprovalKind	DAG submitted	source
MergeConfigPr	rebuild (DeployWindow root + MergeVerify → DeployApply + DeployTail)	approval
UpdateMetaInputs	meta_update (MetaLock + rebuild fan-out)	approval
Spawn	spawn (Create → WriteDropin → Reconcile)	approval
InitConfig	— runs inline (sub-second git seed)	—
SchedulePrompt	— runs inline (single sqlite insert)	—

The DAG carries the originating approval_id, surfaced on the node that owns it — for a deploy that's the DeployWindow root, so the dashboard renders one approval card, not four. Every queued kind resolves through actions::resolve_approval_dag when its DAG settles terminal: the deploy's phases are ordinary queue nodes, so the DAG's own terminal state is the authoritative outcome. That hook fires the matching HelperEvent::* via finish_approval, derives the Rebuilt event's terminal tag (verifying the tag actually resolves in the applied repo — a pre-merge rejection plants none), posts the failing build log back to the config PR, and for a spawn runs the post-spawn forge bookkeeping.

Two visible consequences:

• Operator dashboard: after clicking APPR0VE the work-in-progress shows up on the rebuild queue card (GET /api/jobq/graph, refetched on every rebuild_queue_changed tick), not on the approvals panel (which already moved the row to "approved"). A long meta-update cascade renders as a parent DAG with one child rebuild per affected agent — see docs/web-ui.md for the layout.
• Cancellation: the dashboard's × cancel button on a still-queued DAG calls POST /api/rebuild-queue/{id}/cancel, which flips it to Cancelled before any node runs (and fails the approval row instead of leaving it dangling). Returns {"cancelled": true} on success, {"cancelled": false} once any node started — terminal states can't be retroactively rewritten.

The approval source + approval_id mean a tail-end build failure surfaces back as a failed approval row, not just a silent queue entry. manual (dashboard ↻ R3BU1LD) and auto_update (boot reconcile) DAGs use the same queue but skip the approval plumbing.

Forge mirror

The bundled hive-forge container is mandatory (it deploys with hyperhive), and hive-c0re mirrors every agent's applied repo into a private agent-configs Forgejo org. forge::push_config(<name>) pushes applied/main plus every tag to agent-configs/<name> after each ref mutation: the spawn that seeds deployed/0, every successful deploy (which plants deployed/<id>) or failed build (failed/<id>), and a sweep at startup. Pushes are best-effort — a missing or stopped forge never blocks a deploy.

Each agent is a write collaborator on its own agent-configs/<name> repo — so it can push a branch and open a config PR — but not a member of any other agent's, so it can't reach another agent's config through the forge. Branch protection keeps main push/merge core-only with operator-team approval, so an agent can't fast-forward its own config or self-merge its PR (see the End-to-end flow + #1787). The tokenised push URL is passed inline to git push, never written into applied/<n>/.git/config; that repo is RO-bind-mounted into the root agent, and a stored token would leak core's admin credential to an agent.

The dashboard deep-links into this org — a config repo link per container row and a review PR on forge link per config-PR approval card. See docs/web-ui.md.

Submitting agent's view of config repos

Every parent agent's container has its direct children's config repos bind-mounted read-only (topology-driven: hive-c0re/src/lifecycle/host_config.rs calls bind_child_agent_dirs for each entry in topology::children_of(agent_name)). It is a copy to read a child's current config — not an editing surface.

An agent with the approvals tool group submits a change the same way any other change is made: clone the child's config repo from the forge into its own state dir, commit on a branch, open a PR, and let the operator review and approve it. There is deliberately no second, mount-shaped path that reaches the same file without the review.

Agents holding the can_manage_top_level_agents topology role (see hive-c0re/src/agent_config/topology.rs) get additional host-side bind mounts via set_nspawn_flags:

• /var/lib/hyperhive/agents/ → /agents/ (RW) — all top-level agents' proposed repos (not just direct children).
• /var/lib/hyperhive/applied/ → /applied/ (RO) — every agent's authoritative applied repo, including .git.
• /var/lib/hyperhive/meta/ → /meta/ (RO) — the swarm-wide deploy flake.

The root agent holds this role; a sub-manager that only manages a subtree does not, and only has its direct children's config dirs.

Each proposed repo (/agents/<n>/config/) is pre-configured with applied as a git remote pointing at /applied/<n>/.git. Useful incantations from inside an agent with the full /applied mount:

git -C /agents/<n>/config fetch applied
git -C /agents/<n>/config log applied/main --oneline
git -C /agents/<n>/config show applied/refs/tags/deployed/<id>
git -C /agents/<n>/config show applied/refs/tags/failed/<id>   # body = build error
git -C /agents/<n>/config show applied/refs/tags/denied/<id>   # body = operator note
git -C /agents/<n>/config rebase applied/main                 # base in-flight work on what's deployed

git -C /meta log --oneline                                    # swarm-wide deploy history
cat /meta/flake.lock | jq '.nodes | with_entries(select(.key | startswith("agent-")))'

The RO binds block push at the kernel level — git plumbing inside the container cannot corrupt either authoritative repo.

Startup migrations (older hosts)

hive-c0re runs a couple of idempotent migrations on every startup so a host set up before the tag-driven-deploy + meta-flake scheme (both described above) converges to it automatically. Each phase is a no-op once already applied:

• Tags: agents from before the tag-driven scheme are tagged deployed/0 on main once. Non-destructive — it doesn't touch live containers, state dirs, or claude creds.
• Meta flake: rewrites each applied/<n>/flake.nix to the module-only boilerplate, wires the applied remote in each proposed repo, and bootstraps the meta repo from the current agent list. Set HIVE_SKIP_META_MIGRATION=1 on the service to defer this phase.

No state loss in either migration: claude creds, /state/ notes, the events DB, and both proposed + applied history all survive. The root agent keeps its session; sub-agents stay logged in.

The root/bootstrap container is hive-c0re-managed

The root agent container runs through the same lifecycle as sub-agents. On hive-c0re serve startup, if ruth is missing, hive-c0re creates it. The root agent's flake lives at /var/lib/hyperhive/applied/ruth/; its proposed config at /var/lib/hyperhive/agents/ruth/config/. The root agent can edit its own agent.nix (visible inside the container at /agents/ruth/config/) and open a config PR on agent-configs/ruth for operator approval, same as any other agent.

Differences from sub-agents:

• flake.nix extends hyperhive.nixosConfigurations.ruth (vs agent-base).
• Web UI port via lifecycle::agent_web_port("ruth") — same FNV-1a hash as every other agent (8100..8999 range).
• set_nspawn_flags adds two extra binds: /var/lib/hyperhive/agents → /agents (RW) so the root agent can edit per-agent proposed repos, and /var/lib/hyperhive/applied → /applied (RO) so the root agent can git fetch deployed/failed/denied tags from any agent's authoritative applied repo (see "Root-agent view of applied" below).
• First-deploy spawn bypasses the approval queue (the root agent is required infrastructure).
• The root agent's socket is bound by socket_server::start_manager, pure transport with no dedicated helpers — it uses the same per-agent runtime dir as any other agent (/run/hyperhive/agents/ruth/), not a special manager-only path.

Migration note (for older hosts): drop any containers.root = { ... } block from your host NixOS config. hyperhive creates and updates the root agent itself.

Root-agent policy

The system prompt (hive-agent/prompts/system.md, rendered by hive-agent/src/prompt.rs) is the same for every agent; what varies is which MCP tools are surfaced (gated by tool groups and capabilities in agent.nix). There is no role:manager block that renders only for the root agent. The root agent's approval-gating behaviour comes from its CLAUDE.md / agent-specific instructions, not the system prompt template.

Any agent (root or not) can also ask a structured question of the operator or a peer agent via the ask/answer MCP tools, independent of the approval flow above — see docs/conventions.md#question-routing-ask--answer for the routing rules, ttl_seconds expiry, and cancellation.

Helper events to the submitting agent

Coordinator::notify_submitter(approval_id, &HelperEvent) routes the event to the agent that originally submitted the approval (looked up from the submitter column on the approvals table). The harness delivers it as a regular system inbox message so it drives a normal claude turn. finish_approval fires an ApprovalResolved HelperEvent this way for every approval kind's terminal state, Spawn included. A "FYI, check when convenient" event doesn't need a message — those go through Coordinator::push_todo/push_todo_submitter instead, a direct live dial of the target agent's in-container todo socket (same UpsertTodo request in-container producers use); finish_approval fires one of these too for InitConfig/Spawn/MergeConfigPr, in addition to the ApprovalResolved HelperEvent above, not instead of it. Legacy approval rows that predate the submitter column fall back to the root agent. Variants (hive_sh4re::manager::HelperEvent):

• ApprovalResolved { id, agent, commit_ref, status, note } — fired by actions::approve + actions::deny whenever an approval transitions to its terminal state.
• ContainerCrash { agent, note } — crash_watch: a previously- running container went away with no operator-initiated transient state (Stopping / Restarting / Destroying / Rebuilding) AND no such transient was cleared in the last 30s (RECENT_TRANSIENT_GRACE tombstone, three POLL_INTERVALs — closes the race where a lifecycle op finishes between two crash-watch polls and the container shows briefly as "stopped without transient" before the next start). The root agent can start it again or escalate.
• NeedsUpdate { agent } — sub-agent's recorded flake rev is stale. The root agent calls update(name) to rebuild — idempotent, no approval required.
• QuestionAnswered { id, question, answer, answerer } — dashboard /answer-question/{id} (answerer = "operator"), peer Answer request (answerer = agent name), or ttl watchdog expiry (answerer = "ttl-watchdog", answer = "[expired]").
• QuestionAsked { id, asker, question, options, multi } — fired when an agent calls Ask { to: Some(<this-agent>), ... }. The recipient responds via Answer { id, answer } and the asker sees the matching QuestionAnswered.

The remaining lower-urgency lifecycle notices — Rebuilt, Killed, Destroyed, NeedsLogin, LoggedIn, ConfigReady — are "FYI, check when convenient" events with no reason to drive an immediate turn, so they deliver via push_todo/push_todo_submitter (see above) instead of HelperEvent: an agent_todo_socket push instead of a broker message, subsystem = "core", key = "<event>:<agent>" for dedup, and a single free-text summary (rebuilt_todo_summary renders Rebuilt's ok/note/sha/tag fields into that string).

Optional sha field on ApprovalResolved carries the canonical hive-c0re-vouched commit sha. Optional tag carries the deploy bookkeeping tag — deployed/<id> on a successful build or failed/<id> on a failed one, planted by the MergeConfigPr deploy. Both fields are Option: None on the paths that don't deploy a new commit (spawn / init_config / meta-update / deny, and the auto-update sweep's job_queue::templates::rebuild reapplying the existing main, or the dashboard ↻ R3BU1LD button when the lock didn't move). When set, git show <sha> against /applied/<n>/.git inside the bootstrap container yields the exact tree that was referenced.

To add a new lifecycle notice: if it needs to drive an immediate turn (a live conversation like Ask/Answer, or something genuinely urgent), add a HelperEvent variant + call sites + update prompts/system.md's message-event list. If it's "FYI, check when convenient," call push_todo/push_todo_submitter directly instead — no new wire type needed.

Auto-update on startup

hive-c0re serve runs auto_update::run in a background task right after opening the coordinator. It enumerates managed containers and rebuilds any whose recorded hyperhive rev differs from the current one — sub-agents and the root agent go through the same job_queue::templates::rebuild DAG.

"Rev" = canonical filesystem path of cfg.hyperhiveFlake. Marker file: /var/lib/hyperhive/applied/.<name>.hyperhive-rev. If the flake input has no canonical path (e.g. a github: URL), auto-update is a no-op — rebuild manually.

The dashboard surfaces pending updates per agent: a clickable "needs update ↻" badge appears whenever the marker differs from current rev. The badge POSTs /api/rebuild/<name>, which inserts the same job_queue::templates::rebuild DAG so manual triggers and the startup scan can't drift. When at least one container is stale, a top-level ↻ UPD4TE 4LL button appears that loops over every stale container.