Hive Sharing: Personal Sync & Team Spaces
The Hive is Cortexa's relay server — it lets multiple Cortexa apps share thoughts with each other. There are two ways to use it, and the difference comes down to who should see what:
- A personal hive keeps your own machines in sync — everything you capture flows to every device you own.
- A team hive is shared with other people, and you scope what each person sees by project.
Both run on the same server; you choose the behaviour per connection in Settings → Hive.
Personal sync: keep your own machines in step
If the only peers are your own laptop, desktop, and phone, you want everything everywhere. For each connection, set Share which thoughts to "Everything → whole hive (full sync)". Every capture you make is shared at everyone scope, so all your devices stay mirrored with no per-project fiddling. This is the simplest mode and the right default for a hive only you connect to.
Team spaces: scope sharing by project
On a shared hive you usually don't want every thought broadcast to everyone. Instead, thoughts are routed into project spaces, and people only see the projects they belong to.
Choose what each connection shares
Each Hive connection has a "Share which thoughts" routing mode:
| Mode | What it shares |
|---|---|
| All | Everything, at everyone scope (full sync — the personal-hive choice). |
| Any project | Any thought that belongs to one of your projects is shared into that project's space. |
| Selected projects | Only the specific projects you pick are shared, each into its own space. |
When you share a project thought, it goes into a project space identified by the project's slug (the URL-safe short name derived from the project title). The slug is the shared key both ends use to line up:
Name shared projects identically
The project slug is what the relay matches against. Two people sharing the same project must name it the same so the slugs match. "Atlas Rollout" and "atlas-rollout" produce different slugs and will not land in the same space.
Roles: viewer, contributor, admin
Every peer has a role on the hive (and optionally per project). Roles form a ladder:
| Role | What it can do |
|---|---|
| viewer | Read-only. Receives shares for the scopes/projects it's been granted, but cannot share anything back. |
| contributor | Everything a viewer can, plus share into the projects (or the whole hive) where it holds contributor. |
| admin | Full access — can share into any project space and manage the relay. |
The relay enforces these rules server-side, so a viewer simply cannot publish, and a contributor on Project A cannot push thoughts into Project B.
The read-only badge
When a hive grants your connection the viewer role, the connection is shown as read-only and auto-share is disabled — Cortexa won't try to push thoughts the relay would reject. If you expect to contribute but see the read-only badge, ask the hive admin to grant you contributor on the relevant project.
Joining a teammate's hive with limited access
Scoped invites are how you connect to someone else's hive without getting the run of the whole thing. When a hive admin creates an invite, they can attach:
- one or more projects, and
- a role (usually contributor).
A project-scoped invite makes you a viewer hive-wide but gives you your invite role only on those projects. The practical result: you can collaborate on exactly the projects you were invited to, you can't broadcast to the entire hive, and you can't see other people's projects. This is the "connect to a teammate's hive, limited to the projects they invite me to" workflow.
If the invite has no projects attached, it's an unscoped invite and sets your role hive-wide — that's the one to use for your own personal devices.
To accept any invite, open Settings → Hive, enter the server URL, your display name, and the invite code, then Register & Connect. Cortexa stores the token and reconnects automatically afterward.
Your shared content is encrypted at rest
On the relay, the text of every shared thought — content, preview, summary, and metadata — is AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest in the server's database (and uploaded files are encrypted too). That protects your shares if someone steals the server's disk or a backup.
It's important to be precise about what this does and doesn't cover: it is at-rest encryption, not end-to-end. The running relay decrypts content to fan it out to peers and to render any published posts, so the live server still handles plaintext in memory. Treat the hive operator as trusted.
Where to go next
- Hive P2P Relay (architecture) — the protocol, scope enforcement, roles/grants, and storage in detail.
- Hive Server Deployment — run your own relay, manage projects and grants from the admin dashboard, and create scoped invites.
Team Hive desktop workspace
Settings → Team Hive separates Accounts & setup, Teams & invites, Spaces, and Inbox. Team spaces use account-based access and end-to-end encryption; Relay connections retains the existing Hive relay configuration. The connection-type navigation links both surfaces and Vault Sync.
After signing in and enrolling this device, create a team or join with an invite code. Teams & invites can create spaces and, for permitted team roles, generate or revoke email-bound invitations. New invite codes expire in seven days and are shown once in the current view; creating one does not send email. After someone joins, a space administrator grants their membership and distributes encryption keys from Spaces.
Spaces provides project mapping, opt-in automatic sharing, and key retrieval/distribution controls. Viewer access cannot enable automatic sharing. Clearing a project mapping turns automatic sharing off. Inbox lets you read the full shared thought before importing or dismissing it. Spaces and inbox entries are paginated, and saved spaces remain visible if a refresh fails.