1fc6a71ef9
## Summary The Buzz 1.0 desktop app now lives in [block/buzz-app](https://github.com/block/buzz-app). This adds a banner to the 0.X desktop app that tells users, and lets them download the new app's installer without leaving the app. - A full-width banner sits under the top chrome: "A new Buzz app is here! This version is being retired, so grab the new one whenever you get a chance." - **Upgrade** downloads the installer for this machine inside the app. A dialog shows the progress, then the saved file's name and folder with **Show in Finder** (worded per platform) and **Done**. The file goes to the Downloads folder and is revealed in the file manager. It is never opened, mounted or run. - **Cancel**, Escape or the dialog's close button stops a running download and removes the partial file. - When no installer can be resolved for this machine (unsupported platform, or the manifest fetch fails or is slow), **Upgrade** opens `https://buzz.xyz` in the browser instead. - **More info** opens the [upgrade guide](https://github.com/block/buzz-app/blob/main/docs/upgrading.md) in the browser. - Dismissing (×, labelled "Remind me later") stores a timestamp in `localStorage`. The banner is read once per mount, so it comes back on the next launch (or community switch) once 24h have passed. - It is hidden in the huddle room window. ## Demo https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1f1916e8-f32d-4ec0-8e60-fe7c85dd4a57 Recorded on macOS (Apple Silicon) from a native debug build with the real Rust backend: a full download, **Done**, then a second download cancelled part-way. - The network is throttled through a local proxy so the progress stays visible. Unthrottled, the installer arrives in about two seconds. - The app was launched with a scratch home folder, so the path in the dialog is a scratch path, and the Finder window that the reveal opens is left out of the recording. - Presses are accessibility presses, marked with an orange ring. The OS cursor is not shown. ## How the download works - **Which installer:** a Tauri command reports this install's key (`macos-arm64`, `macos-x64`, `windows-x64`, `linux-appimage` or `linux-deb`). The webview reads the matching entry from the [buzz-app download manifest](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/block/buzz-app/download-feed/downloads.json) once per banner mount. - **Validation:** Rust re-validates the URL on every call. It must be `https://github.com/block/buzz-app/releases/download/<tag>/<file>`, with a restricted tag and file-name character set and the extension this machine installs. The webview names a URL and nothing else. - **Redirects:** a dedicated HTTPS-only client follows at most 5 redirects, and only to `github.com`, `objects.githubusercontent.com` or `release-assets.githubusercontent.com`. - **Limits:** 512 MiB, 15 s to connect, 30 s for headers, 30 s without a byte, 60 min in total. One download at a time. - **Saving:** the body is written to `<name>.<random>.part` in the Downloads folder, then renamed to `<name>` (or `<name> (1)` and so on) without ever replacing an existing file. The partial file is removed on failure, on cancel and at app exit. A partial left by a crash or force-quit is removed on the next launch. - **Downloaded-from-the-internet marking:** macOS gets the `com.apple.quarantine` attribute a browser would write, and Windows gets the Mark of the Web (`Zone.Identifier`). If the mark cannot be written, the download fails and the file is not kept. - **Failures:** the dialog says what went wrong in plain words. Transient failures lead with **Try again**. Failures a retry cannot fix lead with **Download in browser**, which opens the validated installer URL. ## Testing - Unit: `deprecationBannerVisibility.test.mjs`, `newAppInstaller.test.mjs` (manifest and URL rules), `newAppInstallerDownload.test.mjs` (dialog state), and a jsdom test of the download hook. - Rust: `new_app_installer_tests.rs` covers URL validation, the redirect policy, limits, naming without overwrite, cancel and shutdown cleanup, launch cleanup, and the quarantine and Mark of the Web values. CI runs this crate's tests on Linux and on `windows-latest`, so the Mark of the Web test writes a real alternate data stream there. The quarantine test runs on macOS only, which CI builds but does not test. - Smoke: `tests/e2e/deprecation-banner.spec.ts` drives the banner, the download dialog, each failure's actions, cancel and the keyboard paths against the mock bridge. - Native, macOS arm64 debug build: the download was saved with `com.apple.quarantine` set and revealed in Finder; cancel removed the partial; the download kept running while the window was hidden; SIGTERM and a menu quit mid-download removed the partial; after a force kill the next launch removed it. Not verified by hand: - The Windows and Linux flows in a running app, including SmartScreen on Windows. - The Gatekeeper prompt when opening the downloaded DMG, and the macOS Downloads-folder consent prompt, which need a signed build. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) --------- Signed-off-by: Kalvin Chau <kalvin@block.xyz> Signed-off-by: Matt Toohey <contact@matttoohey.com> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Co-authored-by: Matt Toohey <contact@matttoohey.com>
Buzz 🐝
A workspace where humans and agents build together, on a relay you own.
Vision · Sovereign · Forge · Agents · Architecture · Releasing · Apache 2.0
Note
Buzz 1.0 is at block/buzz-app. This repository is Buzz 0.X, which is still available and supported. Buzz 1.0 adds plugins; their API is a preview, so updates can break them.
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
Community
- Buzz feedback community — ask questions, share feedback, and connect with other Buzz users
- @buzzdotxyz on X — news and updates
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.