Getting Started

HivemindOS gives you a team of AI helpers that do real work for you — on your own computers, under your control. You tell the hive what you want; it figures out who does it. You do not need to understand any of the underlying technology to use it.

This page is your first ten minutes.

You can’t break anything

Worth saying before anything else: exploring is always safe. Helpers ask before spending money, sending or posting anything, or doing anything hard to undo. Those decisions wait for your approval in Alerts. Click around freely — nothing runs away without you.

Your first ten minutes

1. Open the app and finish setup. The setup wizard prepares a private workspace on your computer and finds any AI tools you already use. Defaults are safe — you can accept them all.
2. Create your first helper. One click, and free to start — the built-in starter helper needs no accounts or keys. If setup already found helpers on your computer, you can skip this step; they are ready to use.
3. Say hello. Type into the “Message the hive” bar at the bottom of any screen — it follows you everywhere. Ask for anything the way you would ask a capable teammate: “Research X and give me a short brief.”
4. Take the tour. A one-minute walk through the screens that matter. You can replay it any time from Settings, or from the ? button in the sidebar.
5. Give the hive a job. When a request should be tracked and reviewed, put it on the Work board instead of chat. A helper picks it up; you see progress and results.

The five screens that matter

• Fleet — your computers and the helpers on them. Home base.
• Work — the task board. Write down what you want done; helpers pick it up.
• Brain — what your helpers remember and know. Everything one helper learns, all of them can use.
• Chat — talk with a specific helper directly.
• Alerts — anything waiting on you: questions, approvals, and decisions. An item here never means something broke.

Everything else lives in More — you will not need it on day one.

When you see a number that “needs you”

Fleet shows a small “need you” counter. On a brand-new setup this usually just means a setup step is waiting to be finished — click it and follow the guided fix. It is a to-do list, not an alarm.

Help is always one click away

• The ? button at the bottom of the sidebar opens Help: what the current screen is for, a getting-started checklist, a glossary of every hive word, and keyboard shortcuts.
• “Explain this screen” inside Help asks your own hive to describe what you are looking at, in plain language.
• Stuck on a real problem? See the Troubleshooting Cookbook.

Where to go next

• Find a feature by goal — jump straight to what you want to accomplish.
• Work and automations — tracked tasks and work that repeats on a schedule.
• Hive Superbrain — how shared memory and knowledge work.