25abfc4117
## Summary Follow-up to #9005, addressing the review findings that merged unaddressed. None of them affect a relay. `buzz-ws-client` gains one method. Each one skews what the desktop client measures when the relay is slow, which is the case the load generator exists for. - **Reads stop at the stop.** A desktop HTTP read (including NIP-11) now races the run's stop and is abandoned there without being recorded, as EOSE waits already were. Before, a read that outlived the 15 s shutdown grace got its client cancelled and failed an otherwise healthy run. `Fetcher::finish` also keeps the read task's handle until the task ends, so a client cancelled during the join still aborts the task instead of detaching it. - **Root lookups are bounded.** The desktop's seeded-root lookups, for thread recovery and replies, now run under the desktop's 30 s read timeout and stop, not reqwest's 60 s. `roots()` takes an optional bound, and the basic human passes none. If the stop cuts a reply's lookup short, the reply isn't published. That applies to the basic human too: a reply whose root lookup finishes after the stop is dropped. - **An EOSE that arrives in time stays in time.** While a publish waits for its OK, `NostrWsConnection` buffers every other frame. The session loop used to judge EOSE deadlines before reading that buffer, and read one frame per pass. It now handles every frame already in hand (at most 256 per pass) before judging deadlines. Each frame is judged by when it arrived, not when it is read. `NostrWsConnection` keeps each buffered frame's arrival time, and the new `next_event_received` returns it. So an EOSE that arrived after its deadline while an OK wait held it counts as a timeout, and so does a frame that answers the probe late. Past that cap, a pass defers due deadlines, for at most one timeout from the first pass that defers them. While it is deferring, the pass only drains, so another OK wait can't expire an EOSE that's already in hand, and sustained traffic can't postpone a missing EOSE forever. - **Presence and the silence probe.** Both modes now open the app's live-only `presence` route (`{"kinds":[20001],"authors":[…],"since":…,"limit":0}`, up to 256 co-members) alongside the profile and membership routes. As in the app, presence takes no part in establishment: it isn't resumed or carried, and if it fails it doesn't cut a renewal's carry for the other routes. After a tick with no frame since the previous one, they send the app's probe, `REQ probe-N {"kinds":[44100],"#p":[viewer],"limit":0}`, which shows up as `desktop_probe` and is closed at its EOSE. Only frames actually received count, including a publish's OK when it arrives before the probe's deadline. A reaction with no target or a publish whose OK timed out doesn't count. Expiry is judged after the drain against the probe still outstanding. If no frame arrives within the EOSE deadline, the session ends as failed and the client reconnects with backoff. Before this, desktop runs left out presence fan-out and idle-client probes, so they understated load. - **Seed log.** "memberships added (N people)" now reads "memberships ensured", since a rerun adds nobody. - **Docs.** `perf/LOADGEN.md` notes that the six-read cap and flat 30 s timeout are simplifications (the app has neither), and that `legacy` is a lower bound. The pre-fix app also opened a per-channel route for each open or non-member channel and re-sent every route each tick, and the model leaves both out. Not done: an explicit count of REQs abandoned at a renewal (report polish; planned cancellations still aren't errors). ### What got simpler Reads abandoned at the stop now go through one helper, `run::bounded`, which the desktop reads and the root lookup share. Before, each read had its own timeout and its own stop check. `global_reqs` returns the routes the client actually opens, not a fixed pair. The probe and presence routes add one `Route` variant, one op and about 40 lines of session code. `Route::establishes` is now the one place that says which routes take part in establishment, replacing the two `Replay` special cases. "Heard" used to be inferred by comparing activity schedules before and after each step. It now comes from frames only, so `publish` reports whether the relay answered and that comparison is gone. ## Testing On a Blox workstation, at the tree of this PR's head: - `cargo fmt --all -- --check`, `cargo clippy -p buzz-test-client -p buzz-ws-client -p buzz-cli --all-targets -- -D warnings` - `cargo test -p buzz-test-client --lib` (parallel) and `cargo test -p buzz-ws-client`, plus the `loadgen::desktop` tests five more times New tests, each confirmed to fail when its fix is reverted: - `a_read_in_flight_at_the_stop_is_abandoned_not_waited_for`: an 8 s roster read at the stop. Without the stop race the client outlives `drive`'s 5 s stop limit. - `a_cancelled_finish_still_aborts_the_read_task`: aborting `finish()` mid-join ends the read task. With the old `take()`, the task is detached. - `an_eose_in_time_is_not_expired_behind_a_slow_ok`: EOSEs at 1.2 s, publish OKs at 3.5 s, deadline 2.5 s. Without the drain, all four routes time out. - `a_silent_tick_probes_and_an_unanswered_probe_reconnects`: the first connection never answers its probe, so the client reconnects and its next probe is answered. - `a_probe_answered_behind_a_late_ok_does_not_reconnect`: the probe's EOSE arrives in time, but it sits behind a heartbeat whose OK comes after the probe's deadline. With expiry judged against a deadline captured before the drain, the session fails and reconnects. - `a_publish_ok_in_time_answers_an_outstanding_probe`: no probe EOSE ever arrives, and heartbeat OKs answer each probe. - `a_reaction_with_no_target_is_not_heard_as_a_frame`: targetless reactions several times a second still leave the tick silent, so it probes. - `a_reply_whose_root_lookup_the_stop_cut_short_is_not_published`: the stop cuts an 8 s root search short, and OKs are withheld. No `kind 9` EVENT reaches the relay, and the client returns promptly. - `a_backlog_defers_deadlines_for_at_most_one_timeout`: the deferral bound and its reset. - `a_long_backlog_behind_slow_oks_keeps_its_timely_eoses`: 600 replayed events per REQ behind 3.5 s OKs, with a 1.5 s deadline and heartbeats every second. The test fails if the deferral is timed from the REQ instead of from the first pass that defers, and it fails if a second OK wait can run between the deferred passes. - `presence_is_a_live_only_global_only_while_someone_is_watched`: the route's order and its live-only filter in both modes, and that it's absent with nobody watched. - `a_late_eose_is_not_answered_behind_a_slow_ok`: the timely case above with EOSEs at 3 s instead, so all four routes time out, not succeed. - `a_probe_answered_late_behind_a_slow_ok_reconnects`: a probe's EOSE arrives 0.2 s after its deadline while a heartbeat waits for its OK, so the session fails and reconnects. The test also checks that a heartbeat followed that probe on the same connection, so the test can't pass on a probe that simply went unanswered. - `an_answered_probe_is_closed_at_its_eose`: `CLOSE probe-1` goes out before any next probe. - `routes_establish_once_and_a_renewal_holds_them_until_a_cut` gains a case: a renewal where presence times out keeps the other routes carried and establishes nothing. Each new test fails when its fix is reverted (seven mutants in the first round and six in the review round, run on Blox). The test harness now has a tick override that can go below the scenario's 1 s floor, and records EVENT frames by kind. The fake relay sends a REQ's replayed events after the REQ's delay, not before, and the fake API's slow reads sleep in `block_in_place`. No existing test changed behavior. Existing expectations moved for the presence route (one more live EOSE per client) and for reads now abandoned at the stop. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) --------- Signed-off-by: Luke Tornquist <tornquist@squareup.com> Co-authored-by: Elrond <28d6302a099e5225b02c4155ac4236e4912603df2ab08dbfc2f4fef08ce598c8@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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
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.