Prove the connection works

“Connected” in your client means the client is pleased with itself. Hydrant counts a connection once the client has actually shown up. One question settles it.

Before you start

• An approved connection. See Connect your agent.
• The workspace open at Settings › Agents.

Steps

Ask for a first read

1. Ask your agent for anything in the workspace. A good first request:

   Read the Hydrant workspace and tell me its name, its stages and how many issues are in Backlog.

   A well-behaved client calls get_workspace_identity and list_issues. Any authenticated request counts, including the handshake some clients send the moment they sign in. If the row already says verified when you look, that’s why. Ask anyway: the answer is what tells you it reached the right workspace.

2. In Hydrant, look at Access on Settings › Agents. While it waits, the row reads “authorized, waiting for its first contact”, and Hydrant checks for you every few seconds for two minutes. After that, press the Refresh access button beside the Access heading.

3. Read the row once it changes. It names the client, how it was identified, its access (read only, or read and write), who granted it, the last contact and when the current sign-in expires.

Give it a sensible first task

Reads are free. Before you hand over writes, have the agent read Writes that don’t bite, or install the workflow pack, whose base skill carries the same rules. Then try something small and visible: a comment on a test issue, followed by a fresh read to confirm it landed.

Want its work to show a proper face instead of a generic agent mark? Pick a named agent under Shown as on its row.

Catch up on what happened

Ask your agent what’s been going on, and it reads the workspace activity feed with list_workspace_activity: newest first, grouped the way people read it, such as “Claude moved 4 issues to Accepted” or “Henry and Claude are discussing #628”. It never includes comment text. Unlike the app, it also lists your own browser work unless it asks to leave it out. For what changed on each issue since a point in time, it uses list_new_since instead.

What you should see

The row says verified and shows a last contact time. Approved is a promise; verified is a handshake.

In the agent’s answer, check that the workspace name is the one you approved. Every result carries the workspace it came from, so a wrong name here means a wrong workspace, not a confused model.

If it goes sideways

• Still waiting after you asked. The client probably answered from memory without calling Hydrant. Ask it to call the Hydrant get_workspace_identity tool by name.
• The client lists no Hydrant tools. It isn’t signed in. Redo the sign-in step for your client.
• The agent got “Agent credential is unavailable.” The connection expired, was revoked, or the person who granted it left. See Reconnect, expire, revoke.
• The wrong workspace answered. Revoke this connection and connect again, picking the right workspace on the approval screen.
• Reads work, the test comment fails with insufficient_scope. You approved read only. Revoke and approve again with read and write.