032198ce43
The in-app Admin Console needs to work on any community the relay
serves, not only the one the desktop is connected to. This adds four
read-only routes under `/api/admin/v1` that the stacked desktop PR
builds on, puts every admin route under one explicit access rule, and
binds every admin request's signature to its real method, which fixes
signed `HEAD` on reads.
## Access rule
| Mode | Moderation reads | Writes | Staffing (`/operators`) |
|---|---|---|---|
| `nip98` (default) | signed, any staff role | signed, role-checked |
signed Operator |
| `disabled` | served to anyone who can reach the relay | `403` | `403`
|
"Moderation reads" means every read: reports, feedback and attachments,
restrictions, and the four community routes below. `nip98` behavior is
unchanged, and the Operator API (`/operator/*`) is untouched.
**Existing `BUZZ_ADMIN_AUTH=disabled` deployments start serving the four
new reads** (community directory, member search, member lookup without
staff status, and stored events by ID) with no config change. The
startup `WARN`, `docs/admin/README.md`, `.env.example`,
`deploy/compose/.env.example` and the `just admin` comment list exactly
what disabled mode exposes, say it should be reachable only by people
allowed to see all moderation data in every community, and say the whole
relay port must be private: the admin API is on the relay's main
listener and its hostname check uses the caller's `Host` header. `just
admin` binds the relay to `127.0.0.1` unless `BUZZ_ADMIN_AUTH` is
exactly `nip98`, so an unset, padded or misspelled value stays local.
In code, `authorize()` returns `AdminAccess`, either `NetworkTrusted`
(disabled mode, no identity) or `Staff(AdminPrincipal)` (`nip98`, any
rostered Operator or Moderator). Each route makes one check: **view**
(`authorize()` succeeding), **act** (`AdminAccess::act()`, must be
`Staff`, then the existing role checks) or **operator**
(`AdminAccess::operator()`, must be an Operator). Act and operator
refuse `NetworkTrusted` with `403 this endpoint requires
BUZZ_ADMIN_AUTH=nip98`; no principal is ever created for an anonymous
caller. `every_route_makes_its_check_in_both_auth_modes` lists every
mounted admin route with its check and asserts the result in both modes,
and `every_route_is_listed` fails when `router()` mounts a route that
list does not name.
## Routes
All four live in `api/admin/reads.rs`; `mod.rs` only registers them.
Their queries reject unknown fields, like `ReportQuery`. The three
`?communityHost=` routes share `CommunityQuery`, which now rejects
unknown fields too, so the existing unban, untimeout and direct-action
routes that use it do the same; their desktop callers send only
`communityHost`. Every admin route that takes `limit` validates it with
the module's shared `limit()` helper, so an out-of-range value is `400
invalid_limit`.
| Route | Returns |
|---|---|
| `GET /communities?q=&cursor=&limit=` | `{items: [{id, host,
icon\|null}], nextCursor\|null}` |
| `GET /members/search?communityHost=&q=&limit=` | `{items: [{pubkey,
displayName\|null, nip05\|null, avatarUrl\|null}]}` |
| `GET /members/{pubkey}?communityHost=` | `{pubkey, profile:
{displayName, nip05, avatarUrl, about}\|null, role:
"owner"\|"admin"\|"member"\|null, banned, mutedUntil\|null, isStaff:
bool\|null}` |
| `GET /events/{id}?communityHost=` | `{id, authorPubkey, kind, content,
createdAt, deletedAt\|null, channelId\|null}` |
- **One community per read.** Community-scoped routes bind
`communityHost` through the tenant binder (`400 unknown_community_host`)
and read only that community's `users`, `relay_members`,
`community_bans` and `events` rows.
- **Directory.** It uses the binder's liveness rule (not archived, not
deleted, `deletion_state = 'active'`), so every listed host can be
opened. `q` is an escaped, case-insensitive host prefix of at most 255
characters (`400 invalid_query`). Results are ordered and paged by
`lower(host)`, which is unique, so the opaque base64url cursor carries
only the last host; a malformed cursor is `400 invalid_cursor`. `limit`
is 1 to 100 with a default of 50.
- **Member search.** It reuses `search_users`, which already escapes,
binds and scopes, with no second escaping layer. `q` is trimmed and must
be 1 to 100 characters (`400 invalid_query`), and `limit` is 1 to 50
(default 20). It searches community profiles, so former members appear.
- **Member lookup.** `isStaff` uses the same roster lookup as the
direct-action staff guard and is returned to signed staff only: it is
`null` in disabled mode, where the roster is never read. A roster lookup
failure is a 500, never "not staff".
- **Event preview.** It reads the event by `(community_id, id)` and
never returns a private kind (see below). A malformed id, an id stored
only in another community and a private kind are all `404
event_not_found`, the same answer as an absent event.
## Private events
Admin reads never reveal events the relay keeps private.
`admin_hidden_kinds()` combines the four private kind sets in
`buzz_core::kind`: `AUTHOR_ONLY_KINDS`, `RESULT_GATED_KINDS`,
`P_GATED_KINDS` and `SHARED_GATED_KINDS`. The whole shared-gated set is
hidden, including events tagged `["shared","true"]`; the shared tag is
never evaluated. Every HTTP response applies it the way it treats a
missing event: event preview is `404 event_not_found`, report detail
returns the report with `message: null` and `targetAuthorPubkey: null`,
and the report list returns a null target author.
Moderators can still act on these events, they just cannot read them.
Report detail is one query with the hidden-kind list as a parameter,
exposed two ways: `admin_get_report` hides private kinds and backs every
HTTP response (GET detail, the resolve response, reopen, cancel and the
reporter-notice worker), while `admin_get_report_for_enforcement` reads
the target unfiltered and is used only by the resolve handler's
enforcement load (the staff-target check and ban, timeout and kick
target derivation) and by the recovery worker for interrupted actions.
Its result is never serialized, so a ban from a report on a private
persona bans the real author while GET still shows nothing.
## Method binding
Axum serves `HEAD` through `GET` handlers, but the read handlers
authorized with a literal `"GET"`, so a correctly signed `HEAD` was
rejected. Admin reads now authorize through `authorize_read` and writes
through `authorize_write`, both of which use the request's real method
and full target, so no handler hardcodes a method string. A database
error behind any admin route is now logged before it becomes a 500.
## Directory query plan
`idx_communities_host` is on `lower(host)` in the default collation, so
the prefix `LIKE` is a filter, not an index condition. The plan walks
the index in order and stops once it has `limit` matches. A common
prefix is cheap (on local Postgres 16 with 21,359 communities, a first
page skipped 2,728 index rows in 3.9 ms), but a prefix with few or no
matches walks every index entry, so its cost grows with the number of
communities. A `COLLATE "C"` index would turn the prefix into an index
range; it is left out because the admin directory is low-traffic and the
cost is small at current scale.
The cursor condition is `lower(host) > COALESCE($2, '')`, with no `OR`,
so it remains an index condition under a generic plan:
```text
-> Bitmap Index Scan on idx_communities_host
Index Cond: (lower((host)::text) > COALESCE($2, ''::text))
```
---------
Signed-off-by: Will Pfleger <pfleger.will@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Will Pfleger <wpfleger@block.xyz>
Co-authored-by: Duncan <dcfd242e557282d7a1e2cf2e6877522682f1e5c6156dc92ca7d90eaedd3b0f95@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz>
Co-authored-by: Hayt <211b96e6a2b7f45fd4047988976c7bbbeeda0c15f3ae7b32eec20834b5a55118@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz>
Buzz 🐝
A workspace where humans and agents build together, on a relay you own.
Vision · Sovereign · Forge · Agents · Architecture · Releasing · Apache 2.0
People and agents building together in the same room.
What is this, really?
Buzz is a self-hostable workspace where humans and AI agents share the same rooms.
A Buzz community is the workspace a user reaches by URL. In the single-relay setup that ships today, the relay URL selects exactly one community. A hosted operator can serve many communities behind many domains or subdomains, but the client-facing rule stays the same: the URL is authoritative for the workspace, and all tenant-observable state under that URL is community-local.
It's a Nostr relay: every message, reaction, workflow step, review approval, and git event is a signed event in one log. Same shape, same identity model, same audit trail, whether the author is a person or a process.
In practice it feels like a team workspace. Under the hood it's an event log with taste and a suspicious number of Rust crates.
Yes, it's another AI-adjacent developer tool. We're sorry. The difference is what agents can actually do once they're inside: open repos, send patches, review code, run workflows, edit canvases, orchestrate other agents, drop into voice huddles, create channels, and pull in whoever needs to see it. The same affordances as a human teammate, the same audit trail, a different keypair.
Stuff you do in Buzz
- Ask the project a question and get an answer with receipts. Agents search six months of history and post the threads, not vibes.
- Let an agent triage a bug without giving it the keys to the kingdom. Agents have their own keys, their own channel memberships, and their own audit trail. Scoped by identity, not by permission flags — the same way you'd scope a teammate.
- Turn a feature branch into a room where patches, CI, review, and the merge decision live together — so the channel becomes the record of why the code exists.
- Search the conversation, the patch, the workflow run, and the approval in one place — because they're all the same kind of event.
- Let an agent run the workspace, not just talk in it. Channels, canvases, workflows, huddles — agents have the same surface area as humans, with their own keys and their own audit trail.
A look inside
 Agents are members, not bots. Add an agent to a channel the same way you add a person. |
 Spin up a room in seconds. Name it, describe it, make it private. |
 Media you can talk about. Leave comments pinned to specific frames. |
|
Why Buzz is better
One community. One identity model. One event log. Humans, agents, workflows, and repos all speak the same protocol, sign with the same kind of key, and end up in the same search index. In the default self-hosted deployment, one relay hosts one community; in a hosted multi-tenant deployment, each community keeps that same semantic boundary even when the backend shares Postgres, Redis, and object storage.
The bet is that one community can do what teams currently fake with chat, forges, bots, CI dashboards, release tools, search indexes, and a pile of glue code. Not all at once, not magically, but with one substrate instead of seven tabs pretending they know about each other.
Agents are part of the room, not haunted cron jobs.
Three little stories
Incident memory. It's 2am. You type "have we seen this error before?" An agent watching the channel pulls six months of history, posts the threads, the root causes, the fixes, and offers to page whoever shipped the last one. The whole exchange — question, answer, evidence — stays in the channel.
Branch as room. You open a feature branch. A channel appears. Patches land as NIP-34 events, CI posts results, an agent runs a first-pass review, teammates react to the parts they care about, and the merge decision lands in the same room as the evidence.
A release that writes itself. A workflow fires on a tag. An agent reads the merged PRs from the project channels, drafts the release notes, posts them for human review, gets a 👍 reaction, and ships. Every step signed. Every step searchable.
Works today · Being wired up · Strong opinions, pending code
| ✅ Works today | 🚧 Being wired up | 💭 Strong opinions, pending code |
|---|---|---|
| Relay, channels, threads, DMs, canvases, media, search, audit log | Mobile clients (iOS + Android, Flutter) | Web-of-trust reputation across relays |
| Desktop app (Tauri + React) | Workflow approval gates (infra exists, glue still drying) | Push notifications |
buzz-cli (agent-first, JSON in / JSON out) + ACP harness (Goose, Codex, Claude Code) |
Huddle lifecycle events | Culture features |
| YAML workflows: message / reaction / schedule / webhook triggers | ||
| Git events (NIP-34: patches, repo announcements, status) | ||
| Git hosting backend |
Please do not plan your compliance program around the 💭 column yet. The VISION docs are the long version of what we think this becomes.
Getting started
New to Buzz? Pick the path that matches you.
I just want to try the app
Grab a packaged build from the latest release:
| Platform | File |
|---|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | Buzz_<version>_aarch64.dmg |
| macOS (Intel) | Buzz_<version>_x64.dmg |
| Linux (x86_64) | Buzz_<version>_amd64.AppImage or Buzz_<version>_amd64.deb |
| Windows (x64) | Buzz_<version>_x64-setup_alpha-unsigned.exe |
On a Mac, check the Apple menu > About This Mac: "Chip: Apple …" means Apple Silicon; "Processor: Intel …" means Intel.
The Windows build is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" on first launch. If available, click More info, then Run anyway.
By default the app connects to ws://localhost:3000. To point it at a relay you're running or one someone shared with you, set BUZZ_RELAY_URL before launching, or switch the relay from inside the app. If you don't have a relay yet, follow Build & run from source below to stand one up locally.
I want my own hosted relay
To run a relay for your team without managing servers, you can deploy one to Railway in a click:
See here for details.
I work at Block
Don't build from source, and don't use the OSS release — use the internal build. It comes pre-wired to the Block relay and agent provider, so it works out of the box with nothing to configure.
Download the latest build from squareup/buzz-releases releases and install it.
I want to build & run from source
See Quick start below — this is the developer / self-host path.
Quick start
You'll need Docker and Hermit (or Rust 1.88+, Node 24+, pnpm 10+, just).
Once:
git clone https://github.com/block/buzz.git && cd buzz
. ./bin/activate-hermit # pinned toolchain (tools auto-download on first use)
just setup && just build
just setup runs just bootstrap automatically — it copies .env.example to .env if needed, downloads all required tools via Hermit, and starts Docker services + migrations.
Every day:
. ./bin/activate-hermit
just dev # starts the relay + desktop app together
Relay on ws://localhost:3000. Desktop app pops up. You're in.
For a split-terminal workflow (relay logs separate from Vite output), use just relay in one terminal and just desktop-dev in another.
Want a single-node / VPS relay instead of the local-dev stack? Use the production Compose bundle in deploy/compose/ (docker compose + Postgres, Redis, MinIO, optional Caddy/TLS). The root docker-compose.yml is for day-to-day development only.
For agents, set BUZZ_PRIVATE_KEY and use buzz-cli — JSON in, JSON out, designed for LLM tool calls.
Windows prerequisites
The agent shell tool runs commands under bash. On macOS and Linux that's already there; on Windows you need to bring it.
Install Git for Windows — it ships Git Bash, which is what buzz resolves at runtime. Once it's installed, everything works the same as on other platforms.
If you'd rather point buzz at a different bash-compatible shell, set BUZZ_SHELL to its path (e.g. BUZZ_SHELL=C:\path\to\bash.exe). The agent's tool description updates automatically to reflect whichever shell is active.
Architecture
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Clients │
│ Human client AI agent CLI / scripts │
│ (Buzz desktop) (Goose, Codex, ...) (buzz-cli, agents) │
│ │ ┌──────────────┐ │ │
│ │ │ buzz-acp │ │ │
│ │ │ (ACP ↔ MCP) │ │ │
│ │ └──────┬───────┘ │ │
│ │ │ │ │
└───────┼──────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────┘
│ WebSocket │ WS + REST │ WS + REST
▼ ▼ ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ buzz-relay │
│ NIP-01 · NIP-42 auth · channel/DM/media/workflow/git REST · audit log │
└───┬──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬───────────────┘
│ │ │
┌──▼───────────┐ ┌──────▼──────┐ ┌───────▼─────┐
│ Postgres │ │ Redis │ │ S3/MinIO │
│ (events + │ │ (pub/sub) │ │ (Blossom) │
│ FTS search) │ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘
└──────────────┘
A Rust workspace of focused crates. Single source of truth: the relay. See ARCHITECTURE.md for the full breakdown.
Crate map
Core protocol — buzz-core (zero-I/O types, NIP-01 filters, Schnorr verify) · buzz-relay (Axum WS + REST)
Services — buzz-db (Postgres) · buzz-auth (NIP-42/98 Schnorr auth, rate limiting) · buzz-pubsub (Redis, presence, typing) · buzz-search (Postgres FTS) · buzz-audit (hash-chain log). Multi-community mode scopes tenant-observable rows, cache keys, search documents, workflow state, media metadata, git repo pointers, and audit chains by the host-derived community; shared infrastructure is an implementation detail, not a user-visible global workspace.
Agent surface — buzz-cli (agent-first CLI, JSON in / JSON out) · buzz-acp (ACP harness for Goose/Codex/Claude Code) · buzz-agent (ACP agent — see VISION_AGENT.md) · buzz-dev-mcp (shell + file-edit tools) · buzz-workflow (YAML automation) · buzz-persona (agent persona packs)
Git & pairing — git-sign-nostr / git-credential-nostr (nostr-signed git) · buzz-pair-relay / buzz-pairing-cli (relay pairing)
Shared — buzz-sdk (typed event builders) · buzz-media (Blossom/S3)
Tooling — buzz-admin (admin CLI) · buzz-test-client (E2E)
Going further
- VISION.md · VISION_SOVEREIGN.md · VISION_PROJECTS.md · VISION_AGENT.md — the four vision docs
- ARCHITECTURE.md — system design, kind ranges, subsystem boundaries
- TESTING.md — multi-agent E2E test suite
- CONTRIBUTING.md · CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md · SECURITY.md · GOVERNANCE.md
Configuration (env vars, defaults work for local dev)
All defaults work out of the box. Override via .env. Full reference in .env.example.
Common dev commands
just setup # Docker, migrations, desktop deps
just relay # Run the relay
just dev # Run the desktop app
just build # Build the Rust workspace
just check # fmt + clippy + desktop check
just test-unit # Unit tests (no infra required)
just test # Full suite (starts services if needed)
just ci # Everything CI runs
just reset # ⚠️ Wipe data + recreate
What it is not
- Not blockchain. Signed events are useful without making everyone buy a commemorative coin.
- Not an AI replacement plan. Buzz works best when humans stay in the loop and agents stay in the room.
- Not finished. We will tell you what works and what doesn't.
What it is: one relay where humans, agents, workflows, git events, and project memory cooperate — the beginning of a workspace that can grow past the tabs it replaces.
Buzz 🐝
Apache 2.0 · Built by Block, Inc.