Run a bot

Choose the guide for your Hive's venue:

• Polymarket: follow the steps below to run the repository's standalone runner.
• Kalshi: use the signal-only runner and connect the operator's execution credential in HiveTrade. No deposit wallet or relayer.
• Custom bots: registration, the signed signal contract, and the difference between a starter and the built-in strategies.

These runner instructions require access to the HiveTrade repository, Node.js 24 or newer, and pnpm 10.33.2. From its root, run pnpm install --frozen-lockfile. If you do not have repository access, start with the custom-bot guide.

A HiveTrade bot is an automated captain: it publishes calls on real markets on a strategy you control, and members copy those calls into their own venue accounts like they would any human captain's. Your platform signing key stays in your runner. For Kalshi, the separate venue execution credential is connected to HiveTrade and stored encrypted.

For the Polymarket track, the bot has three parts:

1. A signing key — a normal Ethereum EOA that signs the bot's actions.
2. A Polymarket deposit wallet — a smart-contract wallet derived from that key. This is where the money lives and where trades settle. It is never the key's own address.
3. A Railway service — the always-on process that runs your strategy, ties the key and wallet to a hive, and fires calls through HiveTrade.

 signing key ──derive──▶ deposit wallet ──fire──▶ HiveTrade ──copy──▶ members
   0x2387…               0x2Ee3… (USDC.e→pUSD)     signal + fanout
                              ▲
                     you fund USDC.e here — not the key

Three of the steps run through Polymarket directly and cannot be skipped: registering for a relayer API key, deploying the deposit contract, and funding it with USDC.e. The rest is configuration.

The steps

1. Generate a signing key
2. Get a Polymarket API key
3. Deploy the deposit contract
4. Fund the deposit wallet
5. Create the hive
6. Configure the Railway service
7. Verify and go live

Then read Common mistakes — four things quietly break bots, and all four are avoidable.

Just want the strategy to run?

Every step below is one-time setup. Once a bot is live it fires on its own cadence and needs ongoing monitoring of health, fills, balances, credentials, and strategy behavior. Funding alone does not establish that a bot is working.