Collaborators, presence & DMs

Beyond sharing a workspace, Hive lets you connect with people directly by their GitHub username — see who's online, and message them one-to-one. It's the consumer-grade side of Hive's identity model; the workspace-level sharing flow is covered in Invites & joining.

Add someone by GitHub username

1. Sign in with GitHub (Settings → Account) — this is your identity across every device.
2. Open the Friends view from the ☺ button on the left workspace rail.
3. Type a teammate's GitHub username and Add.

They receive a request on every device they're signed in on. Accepting on one device dismisses it on the rest. Nothing about you syncs until they accept — looking someone up only sends a signed request, stamped with your verified GitHub identity so it can't be spoofed.

Username-only. You can only reach someone by their exact GitHub handle (no email/enumeration), and they must have signed into Hive at least once.

Presence

Once connected, each friend shows a presence dot:

• ● online — active in the last ~minute
• ● away — seen in the last few minutes
• ○ offline — older, or appearing offline

Presence is account-level (not per-device) and only visible to accepted friends. Flip Appear offline in the Friends view to stay dark regardless of activity.

Direct messages

Click Message on a connected friend to open a private 1:1 conversation. Under the hood a DM is just a two-person workspace with its own end-to-end encryption key, so it reuses the same chat sync you already know — the relay only ever sees ciphertext. DMs live in the Friends section, not the workspace rail.

How it syncs

• Identity is your GitHub account (github:<id>), shared across your devices; commits Hive makes on your behalf are attributed to you.
• Requests, presence, and DM keys flow through a relay you can self-host (or Hive Cloud). Everything sensitive is end-to-end encrypted.
• Once two devices are connected, Hive will also try a direct peer-to-peer link (see Rendezvous and TURN fallback), falling back to relay forwarding.

Free-tier limit

On the hosted free tier you can have up to 5 active collaborators; paid plans lift the cap (see pricing). Self-hosting your own relay has no cap.

Where this differs from workspace invites

	Collaborators (this page)	Workspace invites
Reach by	GitHub username	a shared link / short code
Scope	1:1 (presence + DMs)	a whole shared workspace + roster
Set up in	the Friends view (rail ☺)	the People pane (right rail)

See also: Identity & devices, Invites & joining.