hyperhive/docs/integrations/github.md
iris 060f325716 docs: fix genuine passive-voice hits in docs/integrations
Sixth batch of the ongoing write-good.Passive pass (hyperhive#4042):
read all 52 hits across knowledge.md/github.md/matrix.md/forge.md in
context and rewrote 39 with a clearly nameable actor -- mostly
hive-c0re, forge_notify, or a specific fn named right there or a
sentence or two earlier. forge.md's notification poller is the
densest yet (19/20 hits rewritten): forge_notify is established as
the section's sole actor early and reused throughout, the shape
that's produced the highest catch rates all along.

Left 13 alone: the "no X is needed" negative-capability idiom (x2),
a container-lifecycle state descriptor ("when container is stopped"),
a false-positive tokenization ("read-only" split across a line wrap,
vale matches "is read" inside it -- not a real passive at all), the
"X can't be Yed" idiom, a generic "before the ids are minted" timing
clause with no natural actor to name, a room-join policy-state
descriptor, an "is enabled"/"is trusted" pair describing a config/
trust state (predicate-adjective-copula bucket, same family as
"is privileged" from an earlier batch), three "**X is required**"
bolded requirement-list labels (structural convention, not really
mid-sentence passives), and a contrastive "are shared" clause
mirrored against an active sibling clause exactly like
claude-invocation.md's "everything else is shared" from the
turn-loop batch -- left alone there for the same reason.

One sibling-inconsistency catch worth flagging: forge.md's merge-
racing-comment paragraph had two passive clauses ("is left off",
"is dropped") sitting next to a third, already-active clause
("appends nothing") in the same three-item parallel list -- rewrote
all three under one active subject (forge_notify) for consistency.

Verified via vale before/after: 52 -> 13 write-good.Passive hits,
exactly the 13 left alone above; error count and other warning
categories unchanged (still on TooWordy since #4097 hasn't merged to
this branch yet). Re-read every changed line in full surrounding
context after editing, matching the diff to intent before running
the final vale check.
2026-09-08 13:29:34 +02:00

145 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown

# 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 — hive-c0re
injects the token 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 the operator provisions a PAT. No per-agent declaration is
needed — an agent gains GitHub 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's 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`). A CLI path also exists 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).
## Implementation
<details>
<summary>How the agent's `gh`/`git push` actually authenticate, and how
the notification poller works</summary>
### 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`
fail unauthenticated. The build bakes the token path into the scripts
(rather than reading it 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's 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's also why this isn't 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's `Restart = on-failure` and
never `always` — a clean exit on a PAT-less agent must not become a
restart loop.
Forgejo models its notifications API 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. Lenient deserializers absorb the two real differences —
GitHub sends the thread id as a _string_ where Forgejo
sends a number, and says `PullRequest` where Forgejo says `Pull`.
`hive-github-notify` prefixes todo keys `gh:<id>` so a github thread id can't 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 doesn't 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's
_slower_ than ours. A hint faster than our own tick isn't 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 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.
</details>