Connect to a HivePod

Web terminal

Open the pod in the console. The Web Terminal card opens a shell signed in as root, right in your browser. The pod must be running.

From your computer

With the hivepod CLI:

hivepod connect web1

This opens an interactive shell. Press Ctrl+D to leave. It works on macOS, Linux and Windows.

Run a single command and get its output and exit code:

hivepod exec web1 "ls -la && pwd"

One-off commands stop after 20 seconds. For builds, installs and other long work, run a background job. It keeps running after you disconnect, for up to 6 hours:

hivepod exec --detach web1 "cd /home/hivepod/projects/app && npm ci && npm run build"
hivepod job status web1 <job-id> --follow

See CI/CD to a pod for all the job commands.

Note

SSH access, root passwords and public IP addresses are coming soon. Use the web terminal or the CLI for now.

Copy files

hivepod cp copies files and folders between your computer and a running pod:

hivepod cp ./site web:/home/hivepod/projects/site     # upload a folder
hivepod cp ./site/. web:/home/hivepod/projects/site   # upload just its contents
hivepod cp notes.txt web:app/README.txt               # relative paths are under /home/hivepod/projects
hivepod cp web:/home/hivepod/data/dump.sql .          # download a file
hivepod cp web:/home/hivepod/projects/app ./app-copy  # download a folder under a new name

• One side is POD:PATH, where POD is the pod’s name or id. The pod must be running.
• Only /home/hivepod/projects and /home/hivepod/data (and anything inside them) can be read or written: the folders that survive restarts, apply and backups. ~ means /home/hivepod.
• A folder copied to an existing folder lands inside it; copied to a path that doesn’t exist yet, it becomes that path.
• Nothing is left out, .env files included: cp copies exactly what you point it at. Sockets, devices and links pointing outside the copied folder are skipped with a warning.
• Uploads and downloads are limited to 200 MiB each (packed). For bigger trees, leave out dependencies and build output and reinstall them in the pod.
• Uploads are sent in chunks with a progress bar and resume after a dropped connection.
• Team viewers can download but not upload.

AI assistants can do the same with the MCP server’s pod_upload and pod_download tools.

Web address

Anything listening on port 80 inside the pod is served at https://<subdomain>.dockhive.sh, with HTTPS handled for you. For example:

hivepod exec web1 "nohup python3 -m http.server 80 >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

To keep a server running across restarts, make it the pod’s startup command. If nothing is listening, visitors see This app is unreachable right now.

Want your own domain? See Custom domains for HivePods.

From an AI assistant

The MCP server has list_pods, create_pod, exec_in_pod, start_pod_job, pod_job_status, cancel_pod_job, pod_upload, pod_download and delete_pod tools.