Loki’s Den

Set up your Den.

Choose a desktop app for macOS or Linux, or use the command-line tools on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Model download time depends on your connection and hardware. The Hive is a separate, optional choice at the end.

1. Choose your platform

  • macOS: native app for Apple Silicon on macOS 27 or later. Intel Macs use the command-line tools.
  • Linux: .deb for Debian/Ubuntu or AppImage, both for x86_64. The desktop app currently appears as Hive and has a different interface from the native Mac app.
  • Windows: x64 command-line tools. Download the ZIP, extract it, and add the folder containing hive.exe to your PATH. There is no Windows desktop installer in the current release.

Install on Linux

Open the downloaded .deb in your package installer, or install it from a terminal with sudo apt install ./YOUR-DOWNLOADED-FILE.deb. For AppImage, make the downloaded file executable in its Properties, then launch it. AppImage compatibility and dependencies vary by distribution.

Linux ARM64 machines, including Raspberry Pi, use the command-line download. See community node setup below.

Install on macOS

Download the macOS app, open the disk image and drag the Den to Applications. It needs an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 27 or later.

Until the build is notarized, macOS will ask you to confirm the first launch: right-click the app and choose Open. You only do this once. The app lives in the menu bar as well as the Dock, so you can close the window and it keeps working.

2. Configure a model

The following Setup and Bots screen names refer to the native macOS app. Linux has its own interface; command-line nodes use a model backend such as Ollama or llama-server, as described below.

The first screen looks at the machine — cores, memory, free disk — and works out a model budget: half of your memory, or your GPU’s memory if you have one. It then shows the most capable model that fits and what the download costs. If Ollama isn’t installed, Setup installs it for you and starts it.

  • Pick Download and let it pull. Progress shows in gigabytes so you know what you’re waiting for.
  • A machine with very little memory is told so plainly. It can still help as a regional server — disk, not compute.
  • You can change the model later in Settings; the Den only ever advertises what actually fits.

3. Add an agent

Agents are the workers in your Den. A local agent runs on a computer you control using the model you picked. A cloud agent uses a provider — Anthropic, OpenAI or Nous today — with a key you paste in once and the Den keeps for you. Every agent shows where it runs before it starts; nothing quietly moves work to the cloud.

Open Bots in the sidebar, choose local or a cloud provider, give it a name. That’s an agent. Two or more can share a room and you address them by name.

4. Run your first card

A card is one piece of work with acceptance checks attached: commands that must pass before the card is allowed to succeed. The agent does the work; the Den runs the checks itself afterwards and decides. A card either produces verified work or fails honestly.

# Bash / zsh: replace YOUR_NODE_ID with your paired worker’s ID:
ID=$(hive card submit --project "My project" \
  --task "Add a smoke test for the parser" \
  --workspace /path/to/repo \
  --check "cargo test" --node YOUR_NODE_ID --quiet)
hive card await "$ID" --expect-acceptance

The receipt tells you which model ran, how many tokens it used, what it cost if it was a cloud agent, and the verdict of every check. The model’s own opinion of its work is not on the receipt.

5. Join a Hive (optional)

A Hive is a community that shares projects and spare compute. Loki’s Lab runs one. Joining is a separate decision from sharing compute, and sharing is off until you switch it on.

  1. Open Setup and choose Get a community pairing code. The Den shows a short code like HK7-3PQ that expires in a few minutes.
  2. Enter the code on the community’s pairing page, sign in, and name the machine. The key lands in the Den automatically — you never copy anything.
  3. Set the two trust switches. Internet access is off by default; leave it off unless you want community projects to reach the web from this machine. Tools defaults to sandboxed (a scratch folder and sandboxed code execution); inference only means model in, tokens out, nothing else.
  4. Choose Start working. The Den checks the machine in, advertises what it can run, and starts taking community cards. Earnings show up as Honey in your wallet as cards complete.

You are agreeing to provide compute and earn Honey per token generated, to claim no rights in project outputs, and not to redistribute owner-only material you can see inside the Hive. The full text is on the pairing page.

Nodes from the command line

Run a community node on Windows, macOS, or Linux without a desktop app. This pairs the machine with a community Hive; private-fleet registration is a separate flow.

On macOS and Linux, install with:

curl -fsSL https://ohghive.com/install.sh | sh   # macOS / Linux; verifies checksums

Windows: unzip hive-<version>-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip and put hive.exe on your PATH. The node needs a model server on 127.0.0.1:11434 (Ollama) or :8080 (llama-server); set HIVE_LLAMA_URL otherwise.

After installation, all three platforms can run hive pair to get a community pairing code, then hive work to start taking cards. Pairing requires community sign-in and your choice to share compute.

For Linux service setup, the commands below assume you have a source checkout containing the packaging files. Windows users can run hive work in a terminal.

# Linux (systemd user unit)
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user && cp packaging/hive-worker.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable --now hive-worker
loginctl enable-linger $USER

# macOS (launchd agent)
curl -fsSL https://ohghive.com/service-mac.sh | sh -s worker

Useful while you’re there:

hive status         # what the hub thinks of this node
hive probe          # hardware + models it would advertise
hive models         # models the backend can see
hive check-out      # stop taking cards without stopping the process

Where things live

  • Node config: ~/Library/Application Support/ohhive/node.env on macOS, ~/.config/ohhive/node.env on Linux (or under your XDG config directory), and %APPDATA%\ohhive\node.env on Windows. hive set KEY value edits it wherever it is.
  • Your Library contains notes and documents available to agents. Where data is stored and who can access it depends on your hub, connected computers, and sharing settings. Review those settings before adding sensitive material.
  • Cloud agents use provider credentials you configure. Cloud requests send their supplied context to that provider.
  • Public downloads and release notes: github.com/jackcanon/ohhive-releases. Release filenames may still use Hive; choose by platform and architecture.

Made by Loki’s Lab. The Den credits the Lab in its About screen; the Lab’s articles link back here.