7ce422417b
## Summary
Relay pods can stall in the `mesh_boot` startup step, and the mesh peer
table grows without limit. One prod pod held 7,793 peer records. Most of
those records belong to pods that no longer exist.
**Cause.** Every boot gets a fresh runtime id, so a restarted pod leaves
its old record behind. Nothing ever removed records, and scuttlebutt
gossip kept spreading the dead ones around the fleet. Each reconcile
pass, including the first one inside `boot_mesh`, then dials every
record one at a time.
This PR makes dead records expire. It also adds the measurements we need
to see the next stall directly.
### Peer-table lifetime (`crates/buzz-relay-mesh/src/membership.rs`)
- A peer record expires 5 minutes after its last heartbeat
(`DEFAULT_PEER_RECORD_TTL`). For comparison, live runtimes refresh every
2s, and the Redis ready registry expires a silent runtime after 45s.
- What happens to expired records:
- They are **rejected on arrival**, so peers that haven't been upgraded
can't re-add them.
- They are **left out** of digests, deltas, and dial candidates.
- They are **pruned** at the start of each reconcile pass.
- Between prunes, they are not admitted (`has_peer`) and not routed
(`peers`, `peer_has_capability`).
- An expired entry that hasn't been pruned yet counts as absent, so any
fresh record replaces it whatever its version. That lets a live peer's
v1 Redis hint re-admit it before the next prune.
- **The TTL never prunes or hides a peer with a live connection**, even
if its heartbeat is stale. Its gossip can stop arriving while the
transport stays up: a dead control stream, or a clock behind by more
than the TTL. The connection proves the runtime is alive. Its stale
record is still kept out of digests and dials. (The existing phi filter
in `peers()` still drops a connected peer once its gossip stalls; this
PR doesn't change that.)
- **`Connected` tracks the transport map.** Because the TTL exemption
trusts that flag, `install_peer` and `remove_peer` write it while
holding the peers lock, so a connection that closes during install
always ends `Disconnected`. A dial's `Connecting`/`Disconnected` writes
are skipped when a connection is already installed, so a failed outbound
dial can't overwrite a live inbound connection. Each reconcile pass also
re-syncs the state from the transport map.
- **Gossip no longer sets connection state.** Before, any gossiped
record was marked `Connected`, even if this pod had never dialed it.
That inflated the `/_mesh` counts. Now a record learned from gossip or
the ready registry enters as `Disconnected`. Only the real connect and
disconnect paths change the state.
- Before building its candidate list, reconcile now skips peers that are
already connected. A pass dials serially, and a dial to a dead runtime
can take about a minute, so `dial_peer` re-reads the record before every
address attempt. It stops once the record has expired or started
draining, or once a connection has landed.
### Instrumentation
- **`mesh_boot` sub-steps** use the existing startup-step gauges:
`mesh_bind`, `mesh_publish`, and `mesh_initial_reconcile`. A pod stuck
in `mesh_boot` now also shows which await it is stuck on.
- **New metrics** (`crates/buzz-relay-mesh/src/telemetry.rs`):
| Metric | Shows |
|---|---|
| `buzz_mesh_dial_total{outcome}` / `buzz_mesh_dial_duration_seconds` |
Cost of each dial |
| `buzz_mesh_reconcile_pass_seconds` | Full pass time |
| `buzz_mesh_reconcile_candidates` | Dials planned for this pass (set
after the registry scan) |
| `buzz_mesh_peer_records{state,draining}` | Table size |
| `buzz_mesh_peer_record_max_age_seconds` | Oldest heartbeat |
| `buzz_mesh_peer_records_expired_total{reason=pruned\|rejected}` |
Expiry activity |
- The dial and pass histograms get buckets up to 600s. The default
`_seconds` buckets stop at 5s, which would hide exactly the stall these
metrics are meant to show.
### CI
The `buzz-relay-mesh` tests and the `buzz-relay` `mesh_boot::tests` did
not run in any CI lane. This PR adds both to `just test-unit`, and adds
the matching stanzas to `scripts/run-tests.sh`.
### What got simpler
- The peer table now has a defined size, about one record per live pod,
where before it grew forever.
- One wrong state write was deleted (gossip marking records
`Connected`).
- Two test suites that silently never ran now run.
### Rollout notes
- Rejecting expired records works one pod at a time. During a rollout,
pods that haven't been upgraded keep gossiping dead records. Upgraded
pods reject them, which shows up as `reason="rejected"` on the expired
counter.
- A pod whose clock runs more than 5 minutes behind has all of its
gossip rejected. It stays reachable through its Redis ready record and
any live connection. A `reason="rejected"` count that keeps climbing
outside a rollout points to that skew.
- Upgraded pods leave expired records out of their digests. Pods that
haven't been upgraded therefore resend the whole ghost set (about 7.8k
records, roughly 1 MB) on every 2s gossip tick, on each old↔new
connection. So during the rollout, `reason="rejected"` will climb by
about the ghost count per tick per connection. This is expected and
stops when the rollout finishes.
### Not in this PR
The boot dial itself is still unbounded: it runs serially, has no
per-dial timeout, and dials gossip-learned records. Bounding it changes
how a pod joins the mesh, so it goes in a separate PR, and these metrics
will measure it.
### Related issue
None found.
### Testing
- New tests:
- `membership::tests`: expired gossip is rejected; prune drops only
expired records; prune keeps a connected peer with a stale heartbeat;
expired unconnected records are neither admitted nor routed before a
prune; a fresh record replaces an expired, unpruned entry whatever its
version; expired records are neither dialed nor gossiped before a prune;
gossip never sets connection state; table stats.
- `runtime::tests::reconcile_pass_publishes_dial_and_peer_table_metrics`
- `runtime::tests::reconcile_pass_prunes_expired_peer_records` (binds
the prune to the reconcile pass)
-
`runtime::tests::dial_skips_candidate_that_expired_after_the_pass_snapshot`
-
`runtime::tests::finishing_dial_does_not_overwrite_a_connection_that_landed`
-
`runtime::tests::connection_closed_during_install_ends_disconnected_and_expires`
-
`runtime::tests::reconcile_pass_resyncs_connection_state_from_transport`
- `mesh_boot::tests::mesh_boot_sub_steps_name_the_step_that_failed`
- Blox at `e06f55a4` (tree `866add1c`): `just fmt-check`, `just clippy`,
`buzz-relay-mesh` nextest 3x, and the `buzz-relay`
`mesh_boot`/`startup_steps`/`metrics` tests all pass. Three of the new
tests fail against a mutant that removes the fix they pin (dial ignores
expiry; dial state writes ignore the transport map; no reconcile
resync).
---------
Signed-off-by: Elrond <28d6302a099e5225b02c4155ac4236e4912603df2ab08dbfc2f4fef08ce598c8@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz>
Co-authored-by: Elrond <28d6302a099e5225b02c4155ac4236e4912603df2ab08dbfc2f4fef08ce598c8@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
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.