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After your agent runs successfully for the first time, the real work begins: making it better. Hive is designed for continuous iteration, from expanding what your agent can do to letting the framework automatically improve it.

Two Modes of Iteration

Building Iteration — Expanding Your Agent

After your MVP agent or sample agent runs, you’ll want to expand its capabilities. This is like debugging, but forward-looking: instead of fixing what’s broken, you’re adding what’s missing. Common iteration patterns:
  • Add new integrations — Connect your agent to additional tools and APIs as your workflow expands
  • Handle more edge cases — Add nodes and edges that cover scenarios your initial agent didn’t address
  • Improve prompts — Refine node prompts based on real-world output quality
  • Add human-in-the-loop gates — Insert approval steps for high-risk actions you initially automated
  • Tighten constraints — Add cost limits, timeout policies, or quality thresholds
Use hive tui to test each iteration interactively before deploying. Run the same inputs through your updated agent and compare outputs.

Production Iteration — Evolution and Adaptation

Once your agent is deployed, your taste and judgment still drive the direction — but AI becomes a significant force multiplier for rapidly iterating and solving problems. With Aden Cloud, production evolution can be fully automatic. The system runs continuous evaluation cycles:
1

Execute

Your agent runs against real-world inputs in production.
2

Evaluate

Outcomes are measured against your goal’s success criteria and constraints.
3

Diagnose

The framework identifies failure patterns and areas for improvement.
4

Regenerate

The coding agent proposes changes to prompts, graph structure, edges, or tools.
5

Redeploy

Updated agents are deployed and the cycle continues.

Version Control

Iteration doesn’t always improve everything. Sometimes a change helps one use case but hurts another. Hive includes version control so you can always go back.
# Restore to a previous version
hive git restore
Think of it like git for your agents — every meaningful change is tracked, and you can revert when needed.

Agent Personality

Not everything should change with iteration. Your agent has a personality — the tone, values, and goals that define who it is. Success isn’t about having your agent constantly changing. It’s about knowing that your goal and personality stay fixed while the agent adapts to solve problems. When you set up your agent’s goal, the core identity persists across evolution cycles. The framework changes how the agent achieves the goal, not what the goal is.

Memory Management

As your agent iterates and runs more sessions, memory management becomes important. Hive nodes have built-in mechanisms for:
  • Node memory — Each node maintains its own working memory within a session
  • Memory passing — Structured data flows between nodes through edges
  • Cross-session memory — Persistent memory that survives between runs using memory tools
  • Memory compaction — Automatic cleanup to prevent unbounded memory growth
For custom memory logic or cross-session persistence, use the memory tools provided by the SDK.

The Iteration Lifecycle

Over time, your agent should progress through these stages:
StageWhat You DoWhat Hive Does
MVPBuild and test with templatesGenerate graph, validate structure
First SuccessDeploy and monitorRun, log, and surface attention flags
ExpansionAdd integrations and edge casesTrack what works and what fails
MaturitySet it and monitorEvolve automatically based on outcomes
Everything before “First Success” should run as smoothly as possible — this is non-negotiable. The docs, templates, and tools are all designed to get you there fast.

Contributing Your Improvements

If you’ve built something useful or found a better way to solve a common problem, share it with the community:
  • Open an issue on GitHub if you encounter limitations
  • Share your agent in Discord for feedback
  • Contribute a template if your agent solves a common business process — see CONTRIBUTING.md

Next Steps