Agents run whatever `claude-code` the meta flake's `nixpkgs` resolves
to, and that is normally a release channel. This one package moves fast
enough that stable trails unstable by weeks — 26.05 is on 2.1.187 while
unstable carries 2.1.220 — and an agent cannot fix it for itself: it
only ever sees the single nixpkgs hive-c0re injects, so an `agent.nix`
has no other tree to reach for.
New host option `services.hyperhive.c0re.claudeCodePackage` takes the
package directly and rides the existing `hyperhiveDocs` threading path —
serveConfigJson -> HiveEnv -> render_flake — to reach each agent as
`hyperhive.claudeCodePath`. Null (the default) is today's behaviour.
What travels is the store *path*, as a plain string literal, not a flake
input: containers share the host's `/nix/store`, so the build is already
reachable inside them with its whole closure and has nothing to travel.
An input would be worse than useless — a `path:/nix/store/<pkg>` input
is re-copied as a reference-less `-source`, which strips exactly the
closure the binary needs.
The catch is that a path written into a generated flake is text, so
nothing in the container's closure keeps the binary alive. The host does
that instead, and gets it for free: the package is interpolated into
`/etc/hyperhive/serve.json`, `builtins.toJSON` preserves string context,
so the /etc entry references it and the system closure gc-roots it for
as long as that generation is the one the agents were rendered from. An
assertion pins that property, because losing the context is invisible at
eval and at deploy — it would surface only as every agent failing to
spawn `claude` whenever the next gc ran.
Container side wraps the path in a symlink farm rather than putting it
on PATH directly: `systemd.services.<name>.path` and
`environment.systemPackages` both coerce a store-path *string* through
`lib.toDerivation`, i.e. `builtins.storePath`, which pure evaluation
rejects. Interpolating the path into a builder is just text and
evaluates anywhere. `claude-code` drops out of systemPackages when a
pin is set, so there is exactly one claude in the container.
Refs #2693
b08176f089