Bee

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Bee is a terminal desktop built on the Wippy runtime. Shells, managed coding agents, applications, threads and approvals run in one workspace as separate processes. The workspace belongs to a background owner, so closing a terminal leaves it running. Several Bees can join into a Hive.

Important

Bee is alpha software. Contracts still change between releases.

Install

Linux and macOS, amd64 and arm64:

curl -fsSL https://bee.wippy.ai/install.sh | sh

The installer takes the latest release, or the one --version VERSION names. It verifies the archive's SHA-256 checksum and puts bee in ~/.local/bin. Archives are also on GitHub Releases.

Use

cd my-project
bee

Each project directory gets its own state and background owner. The first frame is an empty desktop; F1 opens Start. Alt+Tab switches apps, F11 maximizes, F12 replaces the presenter, and Ctrl+Q detaches with the message Bee is still running; bee stop ends it. Stop the owner with:

bee stop

Managed agents:

bee claude
bee codex
bee agy
bee grok
bee muse

Saved profiles live in the Agent app. Agents reach Bee through a scoped MCP gateway: threads, delivery, docs and child launch.

Attach from another terminal:

bee desktops                  # list displays of the running owner
bee observe                   # watch without control
bee client                    # join with control
bee attach WORKSPACE DISPLAY  # take control of one display

Use the workspace and display IDs from bee desktops for bee attach. bee observe and bee client join a running node without starting one. After bee stop, bee daemon runs the node in the foreground without a folder workspace. From another terminal in that directory, bee client opens its workspace picker; Ctrl+] returns to the picker.

Manage the running node's workspaces from another terminal:

bee workspace roots                                   # roots the host admits
bee workspace create Api bee:workspace_root/api --new-folder
bee workspace list
bee workspace archive WORKSPACE
bee workspace restore WORKSPACE

bee workspace list --archived shows archived IDs; --after CURSOR pages longer lists. Archive only when the workspace host is stopped.

Join another Bee's Hive:

bee hive invite               # on the hive node: prints a single-use invite
bee hive join INVITE          # on the joining node, with its owner stopped
bee hive peers                # on either node: show the peer session

For nodes on different machines, start each owner with BEE_MESH_ADDRESS set to an IP address assigned to that machine and reachable by the other node. Set it for bee hive join on the joining machine as well. Bee listens on all interfaces of that IP family so local loopback clients can attach, and advertises only the selected address to peers.

bee --help lists the remaining Hive, process and runtime commands and their arguments. The native command grammar explains the launch routes.

Build

Requires Git, Go 1.27.0 and a C compiler; see native distribution.

make setup
make check
make standalone
./dist/bee

Bee builds from unpatched runtime main, pinned in wippy.build.json.

Read the agent guide and conventions before changing code.

License

Bee code and artwork are MIT. Wippy is MPL-2.0; dependencies keep their own licenses. See SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability.