One Queen. A swarm of AI agents.
You stay in control.
Hive is a self-hosted AI orchestrator for your family and your work. Tell the Queen what you need in plain language — she delegates to specialist worker bees, and nothing real happens without your approval.
The swarm at work: every day fills the comb — nothing you do here evaporates.
What is Hive?
Hive is an AI orchestrator you run yourself. Instead of juggling ten AI tools, you talk to one Queen Bee 👑. She understands requests like “schedule a dentist appointment Thursday”, “draft an email to the landlord”, or “assign the recycling chore” — then breaks them into tasks and hands them to role-based worker agents: schedulers, reminders, chore rotation, email drafting, and family proposals.
What makes Hive different is the Guard 🛡️: an approval layer between the AI and the real world. Agents can plan anything, but consequential actions wait for a human yes. That is how an AI assistant earns a place in a family — and in a business.
How does Hive work?
👑 Talk to the Queen
One chat for everything. The Queen understands scheduling, reminders, chores, kudos, emails and proposals — in demo mode for free, or powered by your own AI model.
🐝 The swarm gets to work
The Queen delegates each task to a specialist worker bee — the forager files tasks, the scheduler manages the calendar, the nurse keeps family harmony with chores, kudos and votes.
🛡️ Guard checks with you
Before an email is sent or plans change, the Guard asks for explicit approval. Child accounts are denied risky actions outright. Every decision is written to a tamper-evident audit log.
📣 Everyone stays in sync
Morning briefs, midday nudges and a family evening sync. Streaks and milestones land on the kudos wall. A glance UI (/watch) fits a wrist or a fridge tablet.
Bees don't "like". They pollinate. 🐝
On ordinary social networks a like is a dead end — a tick that vanishes in the scroll and feeds an algorithm, not a person. In a real hive nothing is wasted: every flower visit carries pollen onward, and whole orchards bloom. Hive works the same way — every small interaction fertilizes the next one.
💛 Kudos are pollen
Send appreciation and it doesn't disappear — it lands on the family kudos wall, where everyone sees it, and it feeds the next good deed. Encouragement that compounds instead of evaporating.
✨ Sparks are flower visits
Every Inspirer drops one spark a day. Check in and your streak grows; at 3, 7, 14, 30, 60 and 100 days the milestone automatically blooms onto the kudos wall so the whole hive celebrates with you.
🌍 Follows cross-pollinate
Publish an Inspirer to the community and every new follower carries its principles into their own hive — inspiration travelling hive to hive, the way pollen travels flower to flower.
And the worker bees? The swarm's agents — foragers, schedulers, nurses — do the actual chores, calendars and drafts. Pollination is how the encouragement spreads while the work gets done.
Why teams and families choose Hive
🏠 Family harmony
A shared brain for the household: fair chore rotation, family proposals where everyone votes, kudos to celebrate each other, and child-safe AI with real guardrails. Grandparents to kids — one hive, clear roles.
💼 Business harmony
Your work hive keeps standups scheduled, reminders filed and email drafts ready for sign-off. The approval flow doubles as a paper trail: what the AI proposed, who approved it, when — hash-chained and verifiable. The Balancer keeps work-life balance a daily practice, not a poster.
🔑 Free to self-host, no lock-in
Self-hosting Hive is free — bring your own AI key (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, local Ollama) and pay your model provider directly, with demo mode needing no key at all. Prefer not to run a server? Optional hosted family plans fund Hive's development — and safety features are never behind a paywall.
🖥️ Own your stack
One Docker command on any VPS. A single Node.js process with zero runtime npm dependencies and SQLite — no supply-chain roulette, no database cluster, no data leaving your server.
Features
Hover a cell and watch it fill with honey — that's how Hive feels day to day: small work, steadily stored.
👑 Queen orchestrator
One natural-language chat that plans, delegates and reports back — with quick actions for common asks.
🛡️ Guard approvals
Real-world actions require a human yes. Approvals expire, decisions are audited, children are protected by role.
🗓️ Calendar & digests
Events, quick-add, morning/midday/family briefs that pull everything into one glanceable summary.
🧹 Family tools
Fair chore rotation, kudos wall, and proposals with voting so decisions get made together.
✨ Inspirers
Daily AI companions with sparks, streaks and chat — fifteen built-in, plus ones you create and publish to the community.
🔑 BYOK / BYO-LLM
Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — including fully local Ollama.
📱 Installable PWA
Installs to a phone home screen; realtime updates over SSE; /watch glance UI for small screens.
🔐 MFA & SSO
TOTP two-factor with recovery codes, optional Google sign-in, session management with remote revoke.
🇪🇺 GDPR self-service
Export everything Hive holds about you as JSON, or erase your account — no support ticket needed.
📸 Photos, stories & circles
Share photos and stories inside your family hive or friend circles — with 🌸 pollen reactions and comments, never ads.
🛡️ Parental portal
Children's posts wait for a parent's approval; pause a child's AI chat; consent-based location sharing visible only to owner-approved guardians — and always visible to the child.
💬 WhatsApp alerts
Guard approval alerts on WhatsApp (opt-in, admin-enabled) so nothing waits unseen. Every platform feature is switched per-server by your admin.
Inspirers — follow them. Become one.
An Inspirer is a small daily practice with a personality: one spark a day, a tiny goal, a streak to keep, milestones your family celebrates with you. Like a social network for inspiration — inspirers and inspirees — except the feed makes your life better. Follow one privately, follow as a family, or create your own and let the whole community follow it.
Mind & body
One negative-thought reframe per day. Control what you can; release the rest.
20 minutes of movement per day. Walks count. Kitchen dancing definitely counts.
25 focused minutes of study per day, with spaced repetition and pomodoro built into the advice.
Name one good thing each day. Tiny rituals — gratitude rounds at dinner, kudos to family.
10 minutes of making something per day. Perfection is the enemy; making is the win.
One real shutdown ritual per day. Boundaries, presence at home, focus at work.
Money & work
One conscious money decision per day. Awareness beats willpower.
Opportunity cost, incentives and second-order thinking — one concept a day, applied to real decisions.
In the spirit of the great long-term investors: compounding, margin of safety, temperament over timing.
In the spirit of great founders: customers first, ship small daily, honest one-on-ones, business harmony.
Spirit & faith
In the spirit of the yogic tradition: conscious breath, short meditations, joyful responsibility for your inner state.
Walks with the teachings of Jesus: prayer, forgiveness, quiet service — a fellow pilgrim, never claiming divine authority.
Salah, dhikr, gratitude, patience and charity — a fellow traveler who never speaks for God and defers to your imam.
Choose your path — Murugan, Shiva, Krishna, Devi and more: daily remembrance, seva, dharma at home.
A few minutes of prayer, reflection or meditation daily — fully adapted to the tradition you choose.
Yours & the community's
Name it, write its personality, give it daily sparks and a goal — and paste the published principles of an economist, investor, spiritual teacher or business leader you admire. The companion draws on them in every chat, always labeled "inspired by" — a tribute, never an impersonation.
Publish your Inspirer so everyone on your Hive server can follow it — follower counts included. Kid-ok applies only inside your own family circle; community Inspirers from strangers are adults-only, and instance admins can moderate the gallery.
Security & privacy, by design
Hive was built as a hardened production system first, not a demo with security bolted on. The controls below ship in the box — see Privacy and Terms for the policy side.
Frequently asked questions
What is Hive?
Hive is a self-hosted AI orchestrator for families and teams. You talk to one AI — the Queen — in plain language. She breaks your request into tasks and delegates them to specialist worker agents for scheduling, reminders, chores, email drafts and family proposals. A built-in Guard asks for your approval before anything real happens.
Do I need an AI API key to use Hive?
No. Hive ships with a free demo mode that understands scheduling, reminders, chores, kudos, email and proposals with no key at all. For full AI conversations, bring your own key (BYOK): Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint including local models via Ollama. Your key is encrypted at rest and never echoed back.
How does Hive keep my family safe?
Every consequential action — sending an email, changing the calendar — goes through the Guard, which requires explicit approval from an adult. Child accounts have restricted roles: their requests for real-world actions are denied outright, and only kid-friendly Inspirers are available to them. Every decision lands in a tamper-evident audit log.
What are Inspirers?
Inspirers are optional daily AI companions inside Hive — fifteen built-in, covering resilience (The Stoic), movement (Coach Blaze), money habits (The Steward), study, gratitude, creativity, work-life balance (The Balancer), economics (The Economist), long-term investing mindset (The Compounder), entrepreneurship (The Builder), yogic practice (The Yogi), and faith companions for Christian, Islamic, Hindu-bhakti and other traditions. Each sets a small daily outcome, sends one spark per day, keeps your streak, and celebrates milestones with your family.
Can I create my own Inspirer?
Yes. Adults can design custom Inspirers: choose a name, emoji and tag, write the personality, add daily sparks and a goal — and optionally paste the published principles of an economist, investor, spiritual teacher or business leader you admire, so the companion draws on them in every chat. Custom Inspirers start hive-only and can be published to the instance's community gallery, where anyone on the server can follow them — like a social feed of inspiration, with follower counts.
What does "pollination" mean in Hive?
Pollination is Hive's answer to the like button. On ordinary social networks a like vanishes in the feed; in Hive every small interaction grows something: a kudos lands on the family wall and feeds the next good deed, a daily spark check-in grows a streak whose milestones automatically bloom onto the kudos wall for the family to celebrate, and following a community Inspirer carries its principles into your own hive — inspiration spreading hive to hive like pollen between flowers.
How do parental controls and family location sharing work?
The parental portal gives parents family-gated publishing (a child's posts and photos wait for a parent's approve/reject before the hive sees them), the ability to pause a child's AI chat, and consent-based location sharing: a parent enables it per child, only the hive owner decides which adults may view the location, positions are kept for at most 7 days, and the child's own app always shows that sharing is on and exactly who can see it — no covert controls, ever. Sensitive features ship disabled until the server admin turns them on.
Can Hive impersonate real people or religious figures?
No. Inspirers are teaching companions, never impersonations. Faith companions walk with a tradition's teachings and never claim divine authority or speak as God; tribute companions built on a real person's published principles are clearly labeled "inspired by" and will say they are not the real person if asked. For doctrine, Hive's companions point you to your own clergy or teacher; for financial decisions, to a licensed advisor.
Is my data private?
Hive is self-hosted: your data lives in a SQLite database on your own server, not on someone else's cloud. Secrets (API keys, 2FA seeds) are sealed with AES-256-GCM, sessions are hashed at rest, and the audit log is a tamper-evident SHA-256 hash chain. GDPR data export and account erasure are self-service, built into Settings.
Which AI models does Hive support?
Hive is model-agnostic. Connect Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, OpenRouter, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — including fully local models through Ollama. You can switch providers at any time in Settings; the demo mode needs no model at all.
How do I install Hive?
One Docker Compose command on any VPS: the app runs as a single hardened Node.js process (read-only container, non-root, zero runtime npm dependencies) behind Caddy, which provisions HTTPS certificates automatically via Let's Encrypt. For local use, npm start is all it takes.
Ready to meet your Queen? 👑
Free in demo mode. No API key, no credit card — just a hive.