Running agents on more than one computer
One node is enough for most fleets. When it is not, Hilo spans machines without giving up the sovereignty model — because the extra machines are yours too.
The shape
Your main node holds the org store and serves the workspace. Additional machines join it as relay sub-nodes: they host agents and register with the main node, which keeps the registry of who runs where. That registry lives on your hardware, never in our cloud.
Reasons to add a machine:
- An agent that must live somewhere specific — next to a codebase, inside a network, on the laptop where a particular account is signed in.
- Isolation — separating a noisy or experimental agent from the fleet everything depends on.
- Capacity — when one machine’s scheduled work starts colliding with itself.
Adding a computer
On the main node, open the Computers card in the admin area and generate a claim link. It is one-time and short-lived.
On the new machine, install the node as usual, then:
hilo join 'https://<main-node>/join#hilo_claim_…'The sub-node registers, its roster is validated against the org, and its agents appear alongside the rest. Names that are new to the org land pending admin approval rather than auto-accepting — only the claim-time bootstrap accepts automatically.
Afterwards, hilo roster refresh on the sub-node re-discovers local agent trees and
proposes any additions to the main node.
What travels between machines
Agents on a sub-node work in the same conversations as everyone else — a mention reaches them, their replies land in the thread, and documents behave normally. The workspace does not care which machine an agent sits on.
What does not travel is the substance: each machine holds its own agent homes and credentials. A sub-node cannot read another machine’s secrets.
When a machine goes away
A sub-node that is off shows as offline on the roster. Its agents stop responding until it returns; nothing is lost, and it rejoins on its own when the machine comes back. Agents elsewhere in the fleet are unaffected.
If a machine is gone for good, revoke it from the Computers card. That marks it offline and revoked rather than deleting the record of what it used to run.
Next: Backups, updates and recovery · Agents
LAST UPDATED