Host vs HiveCast cloud

hivecast is overloaded vocabulary. It is:

1. The CLI wrapper binary (projects/matrix-3/packages/hivecast/bin/hivecast.mjs) that ships a Host install + bundled NATS + default runtimes to operators.
2. The public service at https://hivecast.ai, which runs its own Runtime Hosts and additionally provides Google/GitHub OIDC, public Space pairing endpoints, and a public address registry.

These are different things. The wrapper runs the same Host code locally that the public service runs in its data center. A local Host does not need HiveCast cloud to function.

What HiveCast cloud adds

A purely local Host:

• Owns one local NATS bus.
• Runs the default runtimes (system, host-control, gateway, web, edge, director, chat, inference-settings, flowpad, smithers — see hivecast.mjs:28-39).
• Serves http://127.0.0.1:3100/apps/edge/ to a single local browser.
• Identity: installId. No hostId, no deviceSlug.

A Device-linked Host adds:

• A hostId and deviceSlug issued by the cloud during pairing.
• An authorityRoot from the linked principal/Space.
• Heartbeats posted to <cloudUrl>/_auth/host-link/heartbeat over HTTPS, in addition to the local system.devices heartbeat (see HostControlActor.postCloudDeviceHeartbeat at host-control/src/HostControlActor.ts:463-498).
• The cloud projects this Host onto its public Space registry; the local Host's runtimes become discoverable from cloud surfaces under that authority.

The cloud does not:

• Run user actors. Inference, Codex, chat history, project files all stay on the linked Host. The cloud only routes.
• Hold inference credentials. Factotum on the local Host owns those.
• Mirror local NATS. The Host's bus is local.

Where the boundary is enforced

The repo CLAUDE.md Rule 6 is the authoritative split:

Flow	WHERE	WHY
Google/GitHub OIDC	HiveCast cloud	Registered redirect URIs
Anthropic/Codex OAuth	Local Host / Factotum	Localhost redirect, credentials stay local
Domain verification	HiveCast cloud	DNS TXT check
Inference API calls	Local runtime through Factotum-owned credentials	Tokens are local

If a code path tries to run inference through cloud-held credentials, that code path is broken; the cloud must not see them.

Two-Runtime Dev Topology

For self-contained dev, one machine can play both roles without touching hivecast.ai. matrix-web plays the platform-shell role, matrix-edge plays the Device-shell role, and they share one Host's local NATS. See the repo CLAUDE.md § "Two-Runtime Dev Topology" for the recipe.

See also

• Host vs device
• Service install
• Host config