Security

Jeremy works in cybersecurity, so the Hive was designed the way he'd want a client's system designed: assume something will go wrong, and make sure it can't go very wrong.

Design principles

• Local first. Her mind, her hearing, her voice, her memory and her camera recognition all run at home. What does leave the house is listed honestly on the Privacy page.
• Least privilege. Nexus gets exactly the abilities her jobs need, as a fixed list. Services run with limited permissions, and each one can reach only what it must.
• People decide. Nexus can suggest; people approve. Nothing she says turns into an action by itself, and no change reaches the live system without a review and a human running the install.
• Separation. Trusted family devices, guests, smart-home gadgets and the AI's own machines live apart, so a problem in one place stays in that place. The exact layout stays private, on purpose.
• Fail safe. When a check can't be completed, the answer is "no" or "quiet": an unknown screen sees only house announcements, an unreadable meeting switch counts as a meeting, and a failed safety check undoes an install.
• Verify, don't trust. Every install is fingerprinted. The person running it checks the fingerprint first, and the installer refuses any file that isn't exactly the reviewed one.

Independent shutdown

Nexus's off switch is deliberately outside her reach. It lives on a separate machine that she can't access. When it's thrown, all of Nexus stops and the Hive is cut off from the internet, while the lights and the house keep working. Nexus can't flip it back: turning her on again can only be done on that separate machine, by a person. Stopping her has been tested for real, and more failure tests are planned.

Treating AI output as untrusted

• Her memories are treated as reference material, never as instructions.
• Web pages, emails and search results are data. They can inform an answer but can't trigger an action.
• A filter in code checks her words before anyone hears them, as a safety net under her personality rules.

Keeping it healthy

• Security updates install automatically; everything else waits for approval.
• Nexus checks her own health every few minutes, and a separate machine watches the whole house.
• Heat protection shuts the Hive down safely before it can be damaged.
• Nightly encrypted backups that are checked regularly.

Guests

Visitors get their own Wi-Fi, separated from family devices and from the Hive's services. The fun version is in the rules for pilgrims.