hive

SOP for debugging browser automation failures on complex websites. Use when browser tools fail on specific sites like LinkedIn, Twitter/X, SPAs, or sites with Shadow DOM.

Required before any hive-browser CLI command. The browser is driven from the terminal by running `hive-browser <command> ... --json` via terminal_exec — not via MCP tools. Teaches the browser lifecycle rules (the bridge attaches to the USER'S running Chrome — never kill or launch browser processes; timeouts are transport issues, not crashes), the screenshot + coordinate workflow (hive-browser interact with a fractional coordinate) that reaches shadow-DOM inputs selectors can't see, the viewport-fraction coordinate rule (not pixels), rich-text editor quirks ("send button stays disabled" failures), and CSP gotchas. Covers Chrome via CDP through the GCU Beeline extension.

Required reading whenever any chart_* tool is available. Teaches the one-tool embedding contract (call chart_render → live chart appears in chat AND a downloadable PNG lands in the queen session dir), the ECharts (data viz) vs Mermaid (structural diagrams) decision, the BI/financial-grade aesthetic baseline (no chartjunk, restrained palette, proper typography, single message per chart), and the canonical spec patterns for the 12 most-common chart types. Skipping this leads to 1990s-Excel charts, missing downloads, and the agent writing markdown image links by hand instead of letting chart_render drive the UI.

Claim tasks, record step progress, and verify SOP gates in the colony SQLite queue. Applies when your spawn message includes a db_path field.

Proactively extract critical values from tool results into working notes before automatic context pruning destroys them.

Follow a structured recovery decision tree when tool calls fail instead of blindly retrying or giving up.

Required before calling image_generate. Create and edit images from a prompt — generate an image, make a picture / logo / illustration / icon / banner / poster / thumbnail / hero image / mockup / product shot / social graphic, or edit / restyle / combine existing images from reference images. Uses OpenAI gpt-image-2 through the Hive image service, billed to the user's Hive credits like an LLM call (no API key needed). Teaches the exact call shape, the quality/cost tradeoff (quality="low" is the default and cheapest), reference-image editing, how to show the result to the user with attach_file, and the failure modes (out of credits, model unavailable, moderation).

Read before automating LinkedIn with browser_* tools. LinkedIn combines shadow DOM (#interop-outlet), strict Trusted Types CSP that silently drops innerHTML, Lexical composer, native beforeunload dialogs that hang the bridge, and aggressive spam filters — each has bitten us at least once. Verified flows for profile messaging, connection-request acceptance, feed composition, and search. Requires hive.browser-automation. Verified against logged-in production 2026-04-11.

Maintain a free-form scratchpad of decisions, extracted values, and open questions so context pruning doesn't lose anything you still need.

Read, write, merge, split, rotate, watermark, encrypt, and OCR PDF files using Python (pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, pypdfium2) and command-line tools (poppler-utils, qpdf). Use when the user asks to extract text/tables/images from a PDF, create or modify a PDF, combine or split PDFs, OCR a scanned PDF, password-protect a PDF, or render PDF pages as images.

Periodically self-assess output quality to catch degradation before the judge does.

Set up a Slack notification channel (Sentinel) for a colony by driving the browser — reuse or create the "Hive Sentinel" Slack app from a JSON manifest, install it, capture the bot + app tokens, create/select the channel via the Slack API, and turn Sentinel on so the colony can ping the user on Slack and accept replies. Use when the user asks to "set up Slack notifications", "get pinged on Slack", "connect Slack for alerts", "set up Sentinel on Slack", or clicks the in-app "Set this up with the agent" button on the Slack channel step. Requires hive.browser-automation.

Set up a Telegram notification channel (Sentinel) for a colony by driving the browser — create a bot via @BotFather in Telegram Web, store its token, detect the chat to notify, and turn Sentinel on so the colony can ping the user on Telegram and accept replies. Use when the user asks to "set up Telegram notifications", "get pinged on Telegram", "connect Telegram for alerts", "set up Sentinel on Telegram", or clicks the in-app "Set this up with the agent" button on the Telegram step. Requires hive.browser-automation.

Required reading whenever any shell_* tool is available. Teaches the foreground/background dichotomy (terminal_exec auto-promotes past 30s, returns a job_id you poll with terminal_job_logs), the standard envelope shape (exit_code, stdout, stdout_truncated_bytes, output_handle, semantic_status, warning, auto_backgrounded, job_id), output handle pagination via terminal_output_get, when to read semantic_status instead of raw exit_code (grep/rg/find/diff/test exit 1 is NOT an error), the destructive-warning surface (rm -rf, git push --force, DROP TABLE), tool preference (the terminal handles ALL file read/write/edit/search; use gcu-tools / hive_tools where they fit), and the bash-only-on-macOS policy. Skipping this leads to "tool returned no output" surprises, orphaned jobs, and panic over benign grep exit codes.

Use terminal_rg / terminal_glob for all filesystem search — your project tree as well as system configs, /var/log, /etc, archive contents. Teaches the rg vs glob vs terminal_exec("find/ls/du/tree") split, common rg flag combos for code/logs/configs, glob patterns for finding files by name, the rule that mtime/size/type predicate queries drop to terminal_exec("find ..."), and that for tree views or single-file stat info you should just use terminal_exec instead of inventing a tool. Read before reaching for raw shell to grep or find anything.

Use when launching anything that runs longer than a minute, anything that streams logs, anything you want to keep running while doing other work — or when terminal_exec auto-backgrounded on you and returned a job_id. Teaches the start→poll→wait pattern with terminal_job_logs offset bookkeeping, the `wait_until_exit=True` blocking-poll idiom, the truncated_bytes_dropped resumption signal, the merge_stderr decision, the SIGINT→SIGTERM→SIGKILL escalation ladder via terminal_job_manage, and the hard rule that jobs die when the terminal-tools server restarts. Read before calling terminal_job_start, or right after terminal_exec auto-backgrounded.

Use when you need state across calls — building env vars, navigating with cd, driving REPLs (python -i, mysql, psql, node), or responding to interactive prompts (sudo password, ssh host-key confirmation, mysql connection). Teaches the prompt-sentinel exec pattern (default mode), raw I/O for REPLs (raw_send=True then read_only=True), the one-in-flight-per-session rule, and the close-or-leak-against-the-cap discipline. Bash on macOS — never zsh; explicit shell=/bin/zsh is rejected. Read before calling terminal_pty_open.

Read when a terminal-tools call returned something surprising — empty stdout despite no error, exit_code is null, output_handle came back expired, "too many jobs" / "session busy" / "too many PTYs", warning was set unexpectedly, semantic_status disagrees with exit_code. Diagnostic recipes only — load on demand. Don't preload; the foundational skill covers the happy path.

Concrete patterns for breaking colony work into parallel worker jobs via run_playbook — when fan-out helps, how to model the goal as a tracker table, write the worker skill, author the playbook, pilot, and let convergence retry/resume the gap.

Author a new Agent Skill for a Hive agent that conforms to the Agent Skills specification (SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter, optional scripts/references/assets directories). Use when the user asks to create, scaffold, add, or package a new skill for a Hive agent.

Read before automating X / Twitter with browser_* tools. Verified flows for post, reply, delete, search-and-engage, plus the Draft.js compose quirks that silently disable the send button. Includes the daily-reply and job-market-reply playbooks. Requires hive.browser-automation for the underlying screenshot + coordinate workflow. Verified 2026-04-11.