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hive setup

Provisions a machine for Hive. It checks prerequisites, provisions Hive’s managed agent skills and dependencies, enrolls the current project, and installs the daemon, PR babysitter, and web service. Run it after installing Hive.

In a terminal, setup previews its changes and asks for one confirmation. With --json or without a terminal, it changes nothing unless you pass --yes.

Usage 

hive setup [--yes] [--no-service] [--no-bootstrap] [--no-init] [--json]

Options

Flag What it does
--yes Confirm the complete setup plan without a prompt. Required for --json and non-terminal runs.
--no-service Skip installing and starting the managed web service. An existing service is observed, not stopped.
--no-bootstrap Diagnose only. Runs the checks and provisions nothing.
--no-init Do not enroll the current project.
--json Print a machine-readable hive-setup result.

What it does

  1. Runs diagnostics on the tools Hive needs: Ruby, git, the Claude and Codex CLIs, Node/npm, QMD, and SQLite.
  2. Provisions Hive’s managed agent skills for your configured agents.
  3. Installs QMD if it is missing, and installs or refreshes the web app bundle.
  4. Enrolls the current project, unless --no-init is set.
  5. Installs the daemon and the PR babysitter services.
  6. Installs and starts the Hive web service, unless --no-service is set.

In a terminal, setup also offers once to import your personal MCP servers. See hive mcp.

By default the web UI listens on loopback at http://127.0.0.1:4567. Setup never creates LAN, public, or Tailscale exposure. Setup exits 0 only when every step succeeds. A failed step, or a run refused for lack of --yes, exits 1.

Examples 

# First run: review the plan and confirm once
hive setup

# Scripted core provisioning, without enrolling the current project
hive setup --no-init --yes --json

# Check prerequisites and change nothing
hive setup --no-bootstrap

# Provision everything except the web service
hive setup --no-service --yes

To manage the web service afterwards, see hive web. To enroll more projects, see hive init.