Hive

Hive is an open-source (MIT) command-line tool built by Ivan Kuznetsov that automates the journey from a rough software idea to a merged pull request. It runs an async multi-agent pipeline in the background — brainstorm, plan, execute, review, finalize — and surfaces only the moments that need a human answer. The project is written in Ruby, ships as the hive-cli rubygem, and is available on macOS via Homebrew, Arch Linux via AUR, and glibc Linux via a signed install script.

What It Is

Hive is an agentic harness for software development workflows. It sits between a developer's rough idea and a finished pull request, orchestrating a sequence of AI coding agents (Claude, Codex, or Pi by default) through nine discrete stages. Each stage writes a durable markdown artefact — idea, brainstorm, plan, reviews, PR metadata — that the next stage can read, edit, or hand to another agent. The result is a fully inspectable, file-based state machine rather than a black-box chat thread.

The Nine-Stage Pipeline

The pipeline is the core abstraction. Every task is a folder; the folder's location on disk is its state. Moving a task from one stage directory to the next is the approval gesture:

• 1-inbox — capture a rough idea (one sentence is enough)
• 2-brainstorm — an agent pins down what you actually want
• 3-plan — scope, implementation units, and risks are fixed
• 4-execute — code is written in an isolated git feature worktree
• 5-open-pr — the branch is pushed and a draft PR opened
• 6-review — CI fixes, multi-agent review, triage, and fixes
• 7-artifacts — release and handoff artefacts are gathered
• 8-finalize — the PR body is refreshed and marked ready
• 9-done — the task is archived with cleanup commands

The project calls this practice "compound engineering": making each step's output strong enough for the next one to run autonomously.

Autonomous Features: Patrol and Babysitter

Beyond the core pipeline, Hive ships two opt-in autonomous modes. Patrol maps feature slices across a repository, reviews them, validates fixes, and opens PRs only for the ones that pass. Babysitter keeps open PRs green and mergeable — it runs bounded repair attempts and auto-rebases behind a moving main branch, then hands off when it is stuck. Both modes run through the same daemon that advances the main task queue.

Interfaces: TUI, Telegram Bot, and Agent CLI

Hive offers three interaction surfaces. The TUI (hive tui) is a two-pane terminal dashboard showing registered projects and the live task queue; pressing n captures a new idea and Enter opens the relevant markdown file in the user's editor. The Telegram bot uses long polling (no webhook or public URL required) to let users capture ideas, check the queue, and approve work from a phone — including photos, documents, and transcribed voice notes. The agent CLI exposes every workflow verb with --json output and typed envelopes so that Claude Code, Codex, or any other coding agent can drive Hive programmatically. Hive also publishes an OpenClaw skill (/hive) on ClawHub for guided setup and command dispatch.

Update: v0.3.0

The latest release is v0.3.0, published on 12 June 2026. The repository was created in April 2026 and has been actively pushed to as recently as June 2026, with 37 open issues reflecting active development. The project self-describes as alpha-stage — the homepage labels the Box and Bench sub-tools as "alpha" — and the README flags the tmux Claude launch mode as an "experimental workflow" with rough edges. The install script pins to v0.3.0 and each release is signed with cosign keyless attestation.

Tradeoffs to Know

The homepage is explicit about the cost profile: Hive is "token-heavy" by design. The default configuration runs many subagents and several coding agents per task. The project recommends a Claude Max subscription plus ChatGPT Pro for Codex to get the best results, and notes that cost-sensitive users may try the Pi agent with a recent Kimi model for parts of the workflow, though that integration is not yet performance-tuned. Hive is also strictly local — there is no hosted web app or managed service. It requires a background daemon running on the user's own machine, Ruby 3.4, git ≥ 2.40, authenticated claude and gh CLIs, and tmux when using the default Claude launch mode.