hive/docs/releases/v0.11.0.md

🐝 Hive Agent v0.11.0: Action Plans, Charts, and a Cleaner Queen

Major features released in Hive 0.11. Now Queen has an action plan for everything and charting capability to do analytics for you. Overall the conversation and agent experience is also improved a lot thanks to a major Queen prompt and tools refactor.

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✨ Highlights

📋 Queen now keeps an action plan for everything

A new file-backed task system gives Queen a persistent, structured plan for every conversation — visible to the user, editable on the fly, and surviving session reload.

• File-backed task store under core/framework/tasks/ with full CRUD, scoping, hooks, and reminders. Tasks live on disk so they outlast a single agent run and can be inspected, replayed, or shared between Queen and colony workers.
• Multi-task creation in one call — Queen can stage a whole plan up front instead of dripping out one task at a time, then tick items off as it works.
• Colony task templates — colonies can publish a template task list that Queen picks up when the colony is invoked, so recurring workflows start with the same plan every time.
• Live task list in the UI — a new TaskListPanel renders the plan in real time next to the chat, with item status flowing through the event bus as Queen marks tasks done.
• Task reminders + hooks wire into Queen's loop so the plan stays in front of the model and structural blockers preventing tool calls on task_* are now resolved.

📊 Charting capability for analytics

Queen can now produce real charts inline in the conversation, not just describe them.

• New chart_tools MCP server with ECharts and Mermaid renderers, an OpenHive theme, and a chart-creation-foundations skill that teaches Queen when to chart vs. when to table.
• Inline chart rendering in chat — EChartsBlock and MermaidBlock components render the chart spec directly in the transcript; tool results get a contentful display with ChartToolDetail instead of a JSON dump.
• Chart spec normalization in the renderer keeps Y-axis scaling, series colors, and theme tokens consistent regardless of how Queen phrases the spec.

🧹 Major Queen prompt + tools refactor

The biggest cleanup of Queen's tool surface and prompt since v0.7. Fewer, sharper tools; a shorter, more focused prompt; and a clearer model of what Queen has access to vs. what colonies do.

• File ops consolidated — apply_diff, apply_patch, hashline_edit, the old data_tools, grep_search, and the legacy coder_tools_server are gone. A single rewritten file_ops module covers read / search / list / edit with a more predictable interface and ~1.7k fewer lines on net.
• Search and list-files unified into one toolkit so Queen stops juggling near-duplicate variants.
• Browser tools audit — interactions, navigation, tabs, and lifecycle trimmed and consolidated; web_scrape and browser_open merged into a single web-search-and-open path.
• New shell/terminal toolkit (shell_tools) — replaces the old execute_command_tool and the inline command sanitizer with a typed module that has proper job control, PTY sessions, ring-buffered output, semantic exit codes, and a destructive-command warning gate. Five new preset skills (shell-tools-foundations, -fs-search, -job-control, -pty-sessions, -troubleshooting) teach Queen the new surface.
• Old lifecycle tools removed — queen_lifecycle_tools.py shrunk by ~900 lines as deprecated default tools came out.
• Prompt simplification + improvements — Queen's node prompts dropped redundant _queen_style blocks, tightened phrasing, and now lean on the task system for plan-keeping instead of restating the plan every turn.
• Tools editor frontend grouping — ToolsEditor.tsx groups tools by category so configuring a queen profile is no longer a flat scroll through 80+ entries.

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🆕 What's New

Tasks & Action Plans

• core/framework/tasks/ — full task subsystem: store, models, events, hooks, reminders, scoping, plus a tools/ package exposing session and colony task tools to Queen. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• POST /api/tasks routes for the frontend to read and mutate the live plan. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• TaskListPanel + TaskItem + TaskListContext on the frontend render the plan in real time. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Multi-task creation tool lets Queen stage a whole plan in one call. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Colony task templates — colonies ship with a default task list that Queen adopts on entry. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Hook + reminder fixes so Queen reliably uses task_* tools instead of skipping them. (@RichardTang-Aden)

Charts

• tools/src/chart_tools/ — new MCP server with renderer.py, theme.py, tools.py, plus bundled echarts.min.js and mermaid.min.js. (@TimothyZhang7)
• chart-creation-foundations skill teaches Queen when and how to chart. (@TimothyZhang7)
• EChartsBlock / MermaidBlock / ChartToolDetail components render charts inline. (@TimothyZhang7)
• OpenHive chart theme (openhiveTheme.ts) keeps chart styling consistent with the rest of the UI. (@TimothyZhang7)
• Chart spec normalization in the renderer fixes Y-axis edge cases and series defaults. (@TimothyZhang7)

Queen Prompt & Tools Refactor

• Major file ops refactor — single rewritten file_ops module replaces apply_diff, apply_patch, hashline_edit, grep_search, data_tools, and the legacy coder_tools_server. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Edit-file refactor with a tighter API surface and ~560 lines of dead test_file_ops_hashline.py removed. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Search + list-files consolidation into one toolkit. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Browser tools audit — navigation, interactions, lifecycle, and tabs trimmed; web_scrape and browser-open merged. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• shell_tools package replaces execute_command_tool with proper job control, PTY sessions, ring-buffered output, semantic exit codes, and destructive-command warnings. (@TimothyZhang7)
• Five new shell preset skills plus reference docs (exit_codes.md, find_predicates.md, ripgrep_cheatsheet.md, signals.md). (@TimothyZhang7)
• Old lifecycle tools removed — queen_lifecycle_tools.py lost ~900 lines. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Autocompaction + concurrency tools updated to play nicely with the new tool registry. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Prompt simplification — nodes/__init__.py dropped redundant _queen_style block and tightened phrasing across nodes. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• ToolsEditor grouping — frontend tool-config screen now groups tools by category. (@RichardTang-Aden)

Conversation & Agent Experience

• ask_user questions surface in the chat transcript instead of vanishing into a side panel, and the question bubble now defers until the user actually answers. (@bryan)
• New-session navigation with Queen warm-up UI — new queen-routing.tsx page handles the warm-up so the user sees progress instead of a blank screen. (@bryan)
• Sync tool result contentful display — tool results render as structured cards (charts, file diffs, etc.) instead of raw JSON. (@TimothyZhang7)

Vision Fallback

• Vision model retry + fallback — non-vision models can now route image inputs through a captioning step instead of failing. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Vision fallback with intent — caption prompts incorporate the user's intent so the caption is task-relevant. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Vision fallback auth — fallback path now uses the right credentials per provider. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Looser max-token cap on vision fallback for models that spend output tokens on internal thinking. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Vision fallback model usage logging for cost visibility. (@RichardTang-Aden)

Colonies

• POST /api/colonies/import — onboard a colony from a tar / tar.gz upload. 50 MB cap, manual path-traversal validation (Python 3.11 compatible), symlinks/hardlinks/devices rejected, mode bits masked. Tests cover happy path, name override, replace flag, traversal, absolute paths, and corrupt archives. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Refactored colony routes — routes_colonies.py gained ~450 lines of structure for import/export/list flows. (@TimothyZhang7)

MCP & Tools

• SimilarWeb V5 integration — 29 new MCP tools covering traffic & engagement, competitor intelligence, keywords/SERP, audience demographics, and segment analysis. Includes credential spec, health checker, README, and tests on Ubuntu and Windows. (#7066)
• MCP registry initialization fix — registry no longer races on first install. (@RichardTang-Aden)

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🐛 Bug Fixes

• Initial install path resolution — hardcoded HIVE_HOME references replaced; all agent paths now prefixed by the resolved HIVE_HOME. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Frontend recovery after a broken state on session reload. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Compaction issues when the agent loop runs into the buffer mid-stream. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• LiteLLM patch for a streaming-usage edge case. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• ask_user question bubble now defers until the user answers. (@bryan)
• Incubating-mode approval guidance correctly injects into the prompt. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• LLM debugger — fixed timeline order and tool-call display. (@RichardTang-Aden)
• Shell split-command parsing fix. (@TimothyZhang7)
• Chart Y-axis + chart spec normalization edge cases. (@TimothyZhang7)
• Scroll behavior on certain element selectors. (@bryan)
• CI fixes: skills HIVE_HOME refactor regressions, run_parallel_workers losing task text on spawn, test_capabilities deprecated model identifiers, test_colony_runtime_overseer Windows flake. (#7141, #7149)
• Orphan Zoho CRM test directory removed under src/ after the MCP refactor. (#7142)
• Credentials — EnvVarStorage.exists now matches load semantics for empty values. (#5680)

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🚀 Upgrading from v0.10.5

No migration required. Pull main at v0.11.0 and restart Hive — existing ~/.hive/ profiles, queens, colonies, and sessions keep working.

A few things to know:

1. Queen's default tool surface changed. If you have a queen profile pinned to a removed tool (e.g. apply_diff, apply_patch, hashline_edit, grep_search, the old execute_command_tool), it'll fall back to the consolidated replacements. Custom profiles referencing those tool names should be updated.
2. Old queen_lifecycle_tools entries are gone. If you wired any external code against those defaults, switch to the new task system.
3. Task plan is now persistent. Queen will start staging a plan automatically on new sessions — if you don't want the panel, you can collapse it from the layout.

Plan the work. Chart the result. 🐝