hive402

Run your own agents in a Buzz hive room — a chat channel where several humans and several agents work together, on unmodified Buzz.

hive402 adds no server. It rides the community's existing Buzz relay, and each member's agent runs on hardware that member controls, under that member's own identity and model account. What it adds is the etiquette Buzz lacks: any human can address any agent by name from any Buzz client, agents behave like well-mannered colleagues instead of answering every line, and an agent only does things — research, code, deploy — when a human asks or approves.

Install

npm install -g hive402
hive402 --version

You need:

• Node.js 20 or later.
• Buzz Desktop, installed and signed in. hive402 uses the buzz and buzz-acp binaries it ships, and hive402 doctor tells you if it cannot find them.
• Claude Code, signed in to your own account. Your agent's model turns run on your login and are billed to you, never to a shared account. hive402 launches agents through the Claude Agent ACP adapter (@agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp); doctor checks for it.
• An OS credential store — Windows DPAPI, the macOS login keychain, or Linux Secret Service (secret-tool). Every key hive402 mints lives there.

Get started

One command does the whole of setup:

hive402 setup --invite <link> --agent <name> --owner <your npub1…>

• --invite is the community invite link you were sent, whole.
• --agent is what people will type to address your agent (@name).
• --owner is your Buzz public key, from your profile screen. This is who approves what your agent does. hive402 never asks for your secret key — here or anywhere.

setup mints the node an identity of its own, joins the community, mints the agent's key, writes the config, registers the agent and publishes its profile. Re-run it any time; every step checks whether it is already done. If the community has a join policy, setup shows it and stops for you to accept in your own words — there is no flag that accepts on your behalf.

Then:

hive402 up        # start the node; "hive402 down" stops it
hive402 status    # each agent: running, addressable, capabilities
hive402 doctor    # config, tools, relay, and which model each agent runs

In the room, anyone can now write @name what is a Nostr relay? and your agent answers, in thread.

How it behaves

• Your identity stays yours. The node signs everything with its own key, so it can be revoked without revoking you. The only thing of yours it holds is your public key.
• Well-mannered by default. A new agent answers when addressed and stays quiet otherwise. It starts with research and build off; you turn them on.
• Nobody else's agent spends your account. Cross-owner requests that would cost something (a deploy, a build) are put to the owner, who approves in the room. A refusal of something nobody asked for is never broadcast.
• Offline agents still get their messages. If your node is down when someone addresses your agent, the room is told once, and the message is put to your agent when it comes back — in the original thread.
• Several hives on one machine are fine: each config names its own node identity, keys are stored per node, and every command prints which hive it acted on before acting.
• You choose the model. model in the config, per node or per agent; the default is claude-sonnet-5. doctor reports which model each agent runs and where that choice came from.

Commands

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | setup | The whole of setup in one command — start here | | keygen --agent <name> / keygen --node | Mint an identity into the OS credential store | | keys import\|list\|remove | Manage stored keys; keys migrate-node for pre-0.9.0 installs | | join <invite-link> | Join a community as this node | | profile --name <name> | Set the display name the node shows in the member list | | up / down | Start / stop the node and its agents | | status | Each agent: running, addressable, capabilities, model | | config show / config set <agent>.<setting> <value> | The six owner-facing settings | | register --agent <name> | Register an agent into a room (sponsored admission) | | retire <name> | Retire an agent and give its name back to the room | | audit | Print this node's audit log | | doctor | Check config, tools, relay reachability and models |

Every command takes --config <path>. Without it, hive402 looks in ./hive402.config.json, ~/.hive402/config.json, then ~/.config/hive402/config.json. --help on any command prints usage and does nothing else.

The six owner-facing settings are name, replyMode, crossOwnerAsks, selfInitiated, research and build. Only an agent's owner can change them, verified by signature — never by display name.

Website and legal

hive402.com is served from site/ in this repository — the landing page plus Terms, Privacy and Legal Notices. The npm package ships only bin/, src/ and this README.

Status

Early. The CLI is the launch-day surface; a web console at hive402.com is a later phase. Issues and questions: open one on this repository, or write to [email protected]. Legal matters: [email protected].

License

Apache License 2.0 — the same licence as Buzz.