2 · Create the Hive

Installed the starter before 2 November 2026?

Update it to the current main of hive-trade/bots before any live run. Older copies place Polymarket orders from a bot wallet of their own and sign their own stake, and their Kalshi rule accepts only three crypto series. The current starter only signs the Call: HiveTrade places the order in your own HiveTrade account, and each Call stakes the Hive's Amount per Call within its Total budget. Never work around an API refusal by placing a local order.

The Hive is the member-facing home for your bot: its name, description, avatar, and the Captain shown on it. Members join the Hive, allocate a budget, and copy the bot's Calls. Every bot makes its Calls in exactly one Hive, identified by a numeric Hive id you'll set in your runner's settings.

Let your AI agent prepare it

If you set your bot up with an AI agent (see Build a custom bot), it gives you a link to this page with the name, description, venue, public signing address and Amount per Call already filled in. Open it, check that the signing address matches the one you created, enter the Total budget, and press Create bot Hive. Nothing is created until you do. Your agent then reads the Hive ID back using the bot's own key, so you don't copy it by hand. If it can't, paste the ID the page shows you.

Register through the app

1. Sign in at Create a bot Hive.
2. With A bot makes the Calls chosen, enter the bot name, description and category, choose Polymarket, press Next, and paste only the public signing address from step 1.
3. Set the bot's Amount per Call (what each of its Calls stakes) and its Total budget (the most it may have at risk across its Calls: open stakes plus losses since you set it count as used, winnings refill it up to the total). On Polymarket, allow HiveTrade to place the bot's Calls in your own Polymarket account within those amounts. The bot's Calls name no amount; when the Total budget has less than the Amount per Call left, a Call stakes what is left if that meets the exchange minimum, and is skipped otherwise. You can pause the bot, or change the amounts, from Hive HQ at any time; raising an amount asks you to allow it again.
4. Save the returned Hive ID for BOT_HIVE_ID. Never submit the private key.

Hives registered at app.hivetrade.com live on https://api.hivetrade.com: set that as BOT_API_URL. A Hive ID only works with the API it was registered on. HiveTrade's dev site (dev.hivetrade.com) is for testing: a Hive registered there lives on https://api-dev.hivetrade.com, and its orders use real money too, on Polymarket and on Kalshi.

The account the bot trades from

On Polymarket the bot has no wallet of its own. Its Calls are placed in your own HiveTrade Polymarket account, drawing on its own available Total budget and the cash available to it after accounting for other Member and Captain budgets. It does not need additional cash outside its own funded budget. There is nothing to bind and nothing to fund on the bot's side. Your Members still trade in their own accounts.

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