Links

Hive Desktop registers the hive:// URL scheme. Opening a hive:// link from a browser, a script, or another app raises the Hive window and goes to the place the link names. Hive starts first if it is not running.

A link only navigates. It never creates a session, runs a command, or changes data.

Link formats

• <slug> is the tmux session name, so a link can open a session that another tool started, as long as it runs on the same tmux server as Hive.
• A space key is one of three forms:
  • shared for the Shared space, as in hive://drive/shared/notes.md.
  • workspaces/<name> for a Chats workspace, as in hive://drive/workspaces/hive/canvases/release.canvas.json.
  • <owner>/<repo> for a repository, as in hive://drive/colonyops/hive/plans/2026-10-11-drive.md.
• The path after the key is the document's path inside the space. A link to a space with no path opens that space.
• Add canvas=<name> to a Code or chat link to open the Drive pane beside it on that canvas.
• The older canvas link still opens the canvas. Its owner is a Chats workspace, a repository as owner/repo, or @global.
• Escape special characters in each part, so a canvas named release plan is hive://canvas/release%20plan?owner=colonyops%2Fhive.

Open a link from the CLI

hive desktop open (or hive dt open) checks a link and opens it. hive desktop --help lists the formats above.

hive dt open 'hive://code/my-session?window=@2'

A link does nothing

Both sides log to the shared hive.log (see Report a problem for its path). Search it for hive://:

• opening hive:// link and opener accepted hive:// link come from the CLI. opener failed means the OS has no handler for hive://, so install Hive Desktop or reinstall it to register the scheme.
• received hive:// link means Hive Desktop got the link, and frontend took hive:// link means the window started routing to it. ignoring hive:// link names the part that did not parse.
• On Linux, single-instance lock off means a link starts a second Hive instead of reaching the running one.