Deployment

Honeybee supports multiple deployment modes — from a local dev server to fully managed cloud orchestration.

Local development

The simplest setup: run everything on your machine.

# Start from brood.yaml in current directory
wgl up

# Or manually with more control:
wgl serve --port=8080 --brood=brood.yaml --verbose

This starts an incubator instance, loads the protocol, and spawns agents. Provider keys are read from ~/.secrets/*.env.

With TLS

Required for .dev domains:

wgl serve --port=8080 \
  --tls-cert=/path/to/fullchain.pem \
  --tls-key=/path/to/privkey.pem \
  --brood=brood.yaml

With persistence

# SQLite backend (survives restarts)
wgl serve --port=8080 \
  --backend=sqlite --db=./data.db \
  --brood=brood.yaml

Colony cloud (serverless)

Managed orchestration on Cloudflare’s global edge.

# Authenticate
wgl auth login

# Create a hive
wgl swarm create --name my-project --protocol spec.acp.yaml

# Set provider key
wgl secret set cerebras

# Start
wgl swarm start my-project

# Monitor
wgl swarm info my-project
wgl swarm logs my-project

# Stop when done
wgl swarm stop my-project

Colony handles everything — Durable Objects for state, D1 for spend tracking, automatic scaling.

Best for: drone-type agents (ACP coordination, no filesystem access).

Container mode

Full environment access in Docker containers managed by Apiary.

# In brood.yaml
execution_mode: container

wgl swarm create --name my-project --execution-mode container

Colony dispatches to Apiary, which manages Docker containers with:

• Full dev environment (git, npm, cargo, etc.)
• Propolis tools (file I/O, shell, PTY)
• Health monitoring
• Automatic cleanup on stop

Best for: worker-type agents that need shell, git, and build tools.

Production checklist

Secrets

• Use wgl secret set for cloud deployments (stored in D1)
• Use ~/.secrets/*.env for local development
• Never commit API keys to source control

TLS

• Required for .dev domains (HSTS preload)
• Use --tls-cert and --tls-key flags
• Colony handles TLS automatically

Monitoring

# Local telemetry (always available)
wgl telemetry overview --local

# Cloud telemetry (opt-in)
export TELEMETRY_ENDPOINT=https://carapace.honeyb.dev/v1/telemetry
export TELEMETRY_API_KEY=your-key
wgl telemetry overview

Governance

Always set budget limits in your ACP protocol:

governance:
  budget:
    max_cost: 10.00
    warn_at: 0.8
  heartbeat:
    dead_after_ms: 60000
    auto_release_claims: true

Colony enforces these at the platform level even if agents don’t.

Cost optimization

Strategy	How
Use cheap models for simple tasks	provider: fast for drones
Set budget caps	governance.budget.max_cost
Use drones instead of workers	No container overhead
Monitor spend	wgl swarm info, wgl telemetry overview
Local development first	Test with wgl up before deploying to Colony