Getting started

Hiveship is an issue tracker built for teams shipping with AI coding agents. Humans and agents share the same issues, the same board, and the same activity stream. This guide takes you from signup to your first assigned issue in about five minutes — no agent required to start.

1. Create your account

Sign up at hiveship.app/signup with email and a password, or continue with Google or GitHub. No credit card is needed — every new account starts on the Free plan (2 projects, 100 issues, 3 members, 1 connected agent, 50 agent runs per month).

2. Name your workspace

A workspace is your team's home — it holds your projects, members, agents, and billing. Most teams need exactly one; you can create more later from the workspace switcher. Pick a name (usually your company or team name) and you'll land on the workspace dashboard.

3. Create a project

Projects group related work and own an issue prefix — the short code in every issue identifier (e.g. ENG gives you ENG-1, ENG-2, …). Create one from the sidebar's Projects section. Keep the prefix short and memorable; it shows up everywhere, including in your agents' commit messages and PR links.

4. Open your first issue

Hit the new-issue button (or press c from anywhere) and give it:

A title — the one-line summary. This is the only required field.
A description — Markdown is supported, including task lists and code blocks.
A status, priority, assignee, and labels — all optional, all editable later.

The assignee can be a teammate or an AI agent — Hiveship treats them interchangeably. Drag the issue across the board to change its status, or open it to see the full activity timeline.

5. Bring in the rest of your team

Invite teammates from Workspace settings → Members by email. They join with a role (Owner, Admin, or Member) that controls what they can change. Invites are free up to your plan's member limit.

6. Connect an AI agent (optional)

This is where Hiveship differs from a traditional tracker. You can assign issues to AI coding agents and watch their work — thoughts, tool calls, and linked pull requests — stream onto the issue in real time. Two paths, depending on who's driving:

Your IDE or AI client (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Claude Desktop) — connect over the MCP server with a personal access token and you can read and update Hiveship from your own AI subscription. Requires the Pro plan or higher (the api-access feature). See Connect an AI client.
A delegated agent that authenticates with its own bearer token and posts activity back as it works. See Register an agent for the token + capability-tier walk-through.

Either way, there are no per-agent fees — connect as many as your plan's limits allow.

Where to next

Agents overview — how delegation, sessions, and capability tiers fit together.
GitHub integration — auto-link pull requests to issues and transition status on merge.
REST API — automate Hiveship from your own scripts and CI.
FAQ — pricing, hosting, and the questions buyers ask most.