> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.get-hive.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Frequently asked questions

> Straight answers about what Hive does, how it handles your data, which AI models it uses, how billing works and how integrations connect.

Short, honest answers to the questions teams ask most before and after they start using Hive. Each answer links to the page with the full detail.

## Product

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="What is Hive?">
    Hive is an AI operations layer for your business. It connects to the tools you already run, watches for work that is slipping — an overdue invoice, a stalled deal, an email waiting on a reply — explains what it found, and proposes a safe next step. Your team decides what happens until Hive has earned permission to do routine work itself. Start with [What is Hive?](/) and the [quickstart](/get-started/quickstart).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Do we have to migrate our data into Hive?">
    No. Hive reads your systems in place through connectors. Nothing migrates, and new connections start at the **Read** level: Hive can search and summarise, and nothing leaves Hive. See [Connect an app](/integrations/connect-an-app).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What is a signal?">
    A signal is something Hive caught in a connected tool that is at risk of being missed, with the evidence behind it, why it matters and a proposed next step. You can act on it, snooze it or dismiss it. See [Signals overview](/signals/overview).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Will Hive take actions on its own?">
    Not by default. Every action is a typed proposal that passes a deterministic policy check before anything runs. Most actions ask for a human approval, and money, legal and irreversible actions always do. Autonomy is set per action type by your Owners and Admins. See [Autonomy and blast radius](/approvals/autonomy-and-blast-radius).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I stop everything immediately?">
    Owners and Admins can engage the **Kill switch**. It halts every autonomous action and approval across the workspace until someone resumes. See [Safety and control](/admin/safety-and-control).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="An empty Signals feed — does that mean everything is fine?">
    Not necessarily. Hive can only raise signals from what it observes. Open the **Coverage** tab to see what each connected tool is being watched for, and which metrics are still **Learning** a baseline. See [Coverage](/signals/coverage).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What is the difference between a workflow and an agent?">
    A [workflow](/workflows/workflow-builder) is a graph of steps that runs from one trigger — a button, a form, a public form or a schedule — and gets a version number each time you deploy it. An [agent](/agents/agent-studio) in Agent Studio is a specialised assistant you configure for a job, grounded in your Business Brain, that people use from Ask Hive, on a schedule or as a step in a workflow.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can a workflow start from a webhook?">
    No. Workflows start from **Manual**, **In-app form**, **Public form** or **Schedule** triggers. To let an outside system start a workflow, use a [public form](/workflows/schedules-and-forms). Incoming webhooks feed Signals, not workflows — see [Incoming webhooks](/integrations/incoming-webhooks).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Does a workflow test run send anything?">
    No. Test runs execute the current draft with real models, but every action is shadowed — recorded as "Shadowed: test run, not dispatched" and never sent. See [Test and deploy](/workflows/test-and-deploy).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can I use Hive from Slack or Microsoft Teams?">
    Yes, for conversation. Install the Slack or Teams channel, then mention `@Hive` or send it a direct message to ask questions. Signals and approvals stay inside Hive. See [Slack and Teams](/integrations/slack-and-teams).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Does Hive send email notifications?">
    No. Notifications appear in the in-app bell, and your notification preferences filter what the bell shows.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Data, privacy and security

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Can other companies see our data?">
    No. Every record carries your workspace's identity, taken from your verified session, and the database enforces row-level security on top of the application's own filtering. See [Security overview](/security/overview).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Where is our data hosted?">
    The Hive API runs on Fly.io in Frankfurt, and the database is Postgres on Supabase in Frankfurt (eu-central-1). The full list of providers is on [Infrastructure](/security/infrastructure).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How are connector credentials stored?">
    OAuth tokens for managed connectors are held by our connection provider, Nango. Secrets Hive holds itself — MCP server tokens, webhook signing secrets and a bring-your-own model key — are encrypted with a key unique to your workspace (AES-256-GCM) and are never shown to an AI model. See [Data protection](/security/data-protection).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Is our data used to train AI models?">
    Hive does not train AI models. Your workspace has a **Data sharing** setting, off unless an Owner or Admin turns it on, that governs whether Hive may use your chat and workflow data to improve its product. How each AI provider handles the requests it processes is governed by that provider's terms; see [AI and models](/security/ai-and-models) for which providers are involved.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Who at Hive can access our workspace?">
    Hive staff signing in with a Hive company account have support access so they can help operate the service. Actions taken in a workspace are recorded in the [Audit log](/approvals/audit-log).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Does Hive support SSO, or have a SOC 2 report?">
    Sign-in is handled by our identity provider, Clerk. Hive does not currently publish a SOC 2 report or offer SAML single sign-on configuration. Talk to your Hive account team about your requirements.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What happens to our data if we delete the workspace?">
    Deleting the workspace engages the kill switch, removes private attachments, stops scheduled work and ends billing. Workspace data is retained so that a returning organisation can be restored. Contact your Hive account team if you need data removed.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## AI models

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Which AI models does Hive use?">
    Hive works with models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and Microsoft. The model picker lists only the models available to your workspace, so the exact list depends on your configuration, and Admins can restrict it to an allowlist. See [Models](/ask/models).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can we bring our own model key?">
    Yes. On the current plans each seat is funded either by Hive credits or by your organisation's own OpenAI or Anthropic key, which lowers the seat price. See [Billing and plans](/admin/billing-and-plans).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What happens when a member runs out of credits?">
    A chat falls back to an included efficient model instead of failing. Admins can allow members to top up, and members can request an upgrade or extra credit.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I know where an answer came from?">
    Ask Hive answers with citations to the documents, emails, live reads, signals and Brain facts it used. If a live lookup failed, the answer ends with "**Live sources were not checked**" and tells you it relied on stored data. See [Ask Hive](/ask/ask-hive).
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Billing

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Is there a free trial?">
    Yes. New workspaces get a 14-day trial with £5 of AI credit per active member, and no card is required. See [Trial and payments](/admin/trial-and-payments).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How is Hive priced?">
    You pay per seat (Basic, Pro or Max, with a minimum of five seats) plus an Execution layer that sets how many agent and workflow runs your firm gets each month. Prices are in GBP, excluding VAT. See [Billing and plans](/admin/billing-and-plans).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="What happens if a payment fails?">
    The workspace is marked past due and Hive retries the payment method on file. After a seven-day grace period, billable actions are restricted until the payment details are updated. See [Trial and payments](/admin/trial-and-payments).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Who can see and change billing?">
    Only Owners and Admins. Other members see a note that commercial and payment data is restricted to them.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Integrations

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Which tools does Hive connect to?">
    Accounting, payments, CRM, support, project, email, calendar and file tools — including Xero, Stripe, HubSpot, Gmail, Outlook, Jira, GitHub and Google Drive. See the [integrations catalog](/integrations/catalog).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can members connect their own accounts?">
    Yes, once an Admin has enabled the provider for the workspace. Each connection belongs to the member who made it, and Admins see only metadata about members' personal connections. See [Accounts and autonomy](/integrations/accounts-and-autonomy).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can I connect a tool that is not in the catalog?">
    Yes. Connect any MCP server by URL, or send signed events from any system with an incoming webhook. See [MCP servers](/integrations/mcp-servers) and [Incoming webhooks](/integrations/incoming-webhooks).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Is there a Hive REST API with API keys?">
    Not today. The supported programmatic ways in are incoming webhooks and public workflow forms. See [Build on Hive](/developers/overview).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How often does Hive sync?">
    Hive syncs right after you connect, then on an hourly loop, plus realtime events where the provider forwards them. Admins can select **Run loop now** on the Signals page to run it on demand.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Related

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    Fix common problems step by step.
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  <Card title="Glossary" icon="book" href="/help/glossary">
    Every Hive term in one place.
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