a3a47e6294
🤖 ## Summary Sharing a Solo chat with a large channel today means adding every person as a member, one at a time, and the app blocks the share past 100 people. The plan is to share it the way Google Docs does with "anyone at the company with the link". Buzz's `open` visibility already gives that kind of access: anyone in the community can read and join an open channel. The problem is that an open channel also shows up in everyone's channel list and search, and a private chat shouldn't appear there just because its link was posted somewhere. This PR adds a channel setting, `unlisted`. An **unlisted open channel** can be read and joined by anyone who names it by id (from a shared link). For non-members, it is left out of every read that does not name it. Members see it as before. This is the relay side only; the buzz-app change comes later. #8575 (batch adds) remains the path for small audiences. Unlisted is not an access control. Anyone who has the id can read the channel, and that is intended. ## Solo flows this supports Each user action is one event. The buzz-app side comes later; the relay supports all of these now. | Flow | Event | Result | | --- | --- | --- | | New Solo chat | kind:9007 `visibility private` + `["unlisted", "true"]` | The chat starts unlisted, so it stays unlisted when any client later opens it. | | Share | One kind:9002: `visibility open` + `unlisted true` + `join_role guest\|member`. Then post the link. | Anyone with the link can read the chat by id, both history and live. Nobody is added as a member, so the chat isn't in anyone's channel list. A non-member can't post; `join_role` decides whether someone who joins can. | | View | A REQ that names the chat by `#h`, or by `#d` for its metadata | A non-member can read it. It is never listed for them. | | Reply | kind:9021 join (the app sends it before a viewer's first reply) | Joining makes them a member with the role from `join_role`, so with `member` they can post. A kind:9022 leave makes them a viewer again; the chat stays readable by id. | | Unshare | kind:9002 `visibility private` | The existing open→private eviction closes non-members' live subscriptions. New reads by non-members are refused. | | Convert to a channel | One kind:9002: `["t", ""]` + `unlisted false`, plus `visibility` | Clears the Solo label. Non-members can now find it in discovery. | **Sidebar pins are not relay state.** Pin and unpin live in the app's existing kind:30078 sidebar preferences, which sync across devices and don't touch membership. Don't map them to join/leave: someone a chat was shared with by member add is already a member, so a leave would remove their access. Your own Solo chats keep showing up, because you're their owner member, and members see unlisted channels everywhere. Existing Solo chats aren't backfilled. They get the flag when they're shared, because the share event sets it. **Open question, not built here:** someone who only views a shared chat isn't a member. A mention of them doesn't reach their inbox (`#p:[me]` without `#h`) and sends them no push. ## Behavior | Reader | Reads that don't name the channel (kind:39000 without `#d`, `#P` creator queries, messages, COUNT, NIP-50 search, artifact queries, channel list) | Reads that name it (`#h`, or `#d` on 39000–39003) | kind:9021 join | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Member | Listed | Readable | n/a | | Non-member, unlisted open channel | **Not listed** | Readable | Works; `join_role` still decides the role | | Non-member, private channel (unlisted or not) | Not listed | Not readable | Refused | - **Setting it:** kind:9002 `["unlisted", "true"]` / `["unlisted", "false"]`. Owner or admin only, like `visibility`. A missing tag means no change. It can be sent in the same event as `["visibility", "open"]`, so a private chat becomes open and unlisted in one step. Any other value is refused before the event is stored. The relay posts an `unlisted_changed` system message and clears the accessible-channels cache across nodes. Nobody loses access when a channel is unlisted, so no subscriptions are evicted. - **At creation:** kind:9007 also takes `["unlisted", "true"|"false"]`. A missing tag means listed. Any other value is refused before the event is stored, as on kind:9002. It is stored with the channel row in the create's transaction, on both the client-UUID path and the relay-chosen-UUID path. - **kind:39000** carries a bare `["unlisted"]` flag while the setting is on. It does not add NIP-29 `hidden`, so the metadata stays readable by id. - **NIP-11** advertises `buzz-unlisted-channels` in `supported_extensions`. A relay without this PR would apply `["visibility", "open"]` and ignore `unlisted`, which would list the chat publicly. So buzz-app must check for the extension before it sends that pair. - **CLI:** `buzz channels update --channel <id> --unlisted true|false` and `buzz channels create ... --unlisted`. `buzz_sdk::build_update_channel` takes a new `unlisted: Option<bool>` argument, and `buzz_sdk::build_create_channel` takes `unlisted: bool`, which emits the tag only when true. ### Open question: does `unlisted` only mean something when the channel is open? **Decision: store it on its own; it only has an effect while the channel is open.** Private channels are already invisible to non-members, so on a private channel the flag does nothing. It is still stored and published, for three reasons: - a client can mark a Solo chat unlisted before opening it, or in the same event that opens it, so the chat is never listed even for a moment; - switching private → open → private → open keeps the setting; - there is no cross-field rule in kind:9002 to validate or keep in sync. kind:39000 publishes the flag as stored, whatever the visibility, so clients can show the setting. ## How The relay already has a "readable only when named" path for system channels (NIP-CL). Unlisted open channels reuse it: - **`get_accessible_channel_ids`**: the open half (the implicit scope of a REQ that doesn't name a channel) adds `AND NOT unlisted`. The member half is unchanged, so members still have the channel. - **`get_readable_named_only_channels`**: also returns unlisted open channels of the legacy types. Every reader of that set (REQ, COUNT, NIP-50 search, HTTP `/query` and `/count`, thread windows, workflow run reads) adds a named-only channel only to a filter that names it, through `filter_channel_scope`. An unlisted channel's type is `stream`/`forum`, so the `#t:["system"]`/`#P` system opt-in never adds it. - **`get_accessible_channels`** (the channel list): open channels are listed to non-members only when not unlisted. - **`query_artifacts`**: an artifact in an unlisted open channel reaches a non-member only when the query's `#h` names that channel. - **Live fan-out:** no change was needed. A global subscription never receives channel-scoped events, kind:39000 included (`fan_out_scoped`). A channel-scoped subscription has to name the channel, and that goes through the same named-only authorization. **Left alone on purpose:** access checks that read a named channel or event keep treating an unlisted channel as open. These are `handle_join_request` (kind:9021), the ingest write gate, operator-listener mention delivery (`load_deliverable_event`), personal read-state writes, and push matching. Push matching still requires membership, so non-members get no pushes from an unlisted channel. **Named reads checked:** these callers use the implicit channel set (`get_accessible_channel_ids`, its cache, `get_accessible_channels`). Every one that reads a channel the request names also adds the named-only set, so a non-member can still read an unlisted open chat by id. That covers WS REQ (history, live registration, NIP-50 search), WS COUNT, HTTP `/query` and `/count`, thread windows and workflow run reads. Other named reads don't use the implicit set: they check visibility or membership, so an unlisted open chat counts as open. Those are live fan-out, the ingest write gate, typing, kind:9021 join, huddle audio join, operator-listener delivery, the workflow sink and read-state writes. Feed queries (mentions, needs-action, activity) and the `/buzz/v1/me/sidebar` accessory API are lists, so leaving out chats you only view is intended. Media reads don't check channels. `buzz-auth`'s `ChannelAccessChecker` has no production implementation. ## Database (docs/database.md checklist) - **Phase:** expand only. The migration adds a column with a constant default, and the same release ships the code that reads and writes it. No backfill or contract step follows. - No trigger, function, procedure, rule or foreign key is added. - No migration changes existing rows. `ADD COLUMN ... BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT FALSE` stores the constant default in the catalog, so the table is not rewritten. - Every location in Rule 4 is updated: `migrations/0069_channel_unlisted.sql`, `schema/tables/public/channels.sql`, and the migration count. No seeds, types or reconcile changes are needed. `admin_schema_parity_between_desired_state_and_migrations` now compares `channels` columns between the pgschema desired state and the migrated database. I failed it once by removing the column from `channels.sql`. Only columns are compared for `channels`: on current `main`, pgschema already re-emits `idx_channels_id_live` without its `INCLUDE (community_id)`, an index drift that predates this PR and is noted in the test. - **Currently deployed relay against the new schema:** it never selects or writes `unlisted`, and every insert gets the default. All channel-record queries name their columns. Nobody can set the flag until this relay ships, because the old relay refuses a kind:9002 whose only tag is `unlisted`. - The migration starts with `SET LOCAL lock_timeout = '5s'`. No index is added: the new predicates ride the existing `(community_id, visibility)` index. ## Rollout 1. Deploy. Every channel stays listed, so nothing changes. 2. **Don't unlist any channel while an old relay is still running.** An old relay ignores the column and lists the channel to everyone. The NIP-11 extension lets clients gate on this. Unlisted isn't an access boundary, so a mixed fleet only exposes the channel in listings for a while. 3. **Rollback:** an older relay ignores the column, so unlisted channels show up as ordinary open channels again. Nothing breaks. ## Tests Postgres (`buzz-db`, discovered by the Postgres lane): - `unlisted_open_channel_is_named_only_for_non_members`: sets the flag through `update_channel`. Then checks that a non-member doesn't get it from `get_accessible_channel_ids` or `get_accessible_channels`, and does get it from `get_readable_named_only_channels`; that a member still lists it; that `put_member` (the kind:9021 path) lets the non-member join, after which they list it; and that listing it again shows it to a new reader. - `unlisted_private_channel_stays_private_and_opens_unlisted`: a private unlisted channel is not readable by name, and opening it keeps the flag. - `group_metadata_publishes_the_stored_unlisted_flag`, plus the unit test `publishes_the_unlisted_flag_as_stored`. - `unlisted_channel_artifacts_are_read_by_name_for_non_members`. - `channel_created_unlisted_is_never_listed`: creating through `create_channel_with_event` (the kind:9007 path) and `create_labeled_channel` stores the flag, and the channel is never listed to a non-member. - Mutation-checked: each of `NOT unlisted` in the implicit scope, `NOT c.unlisted` in the channel list, the unlisted branch of the named-only query, its `visibility = 'open'` guard, and the artifact condition was removed one at a time, and each removal failed at least one of these tests. Relay E2E (`test_nip29_unlisted_channel_wire`, added to the CI relay E2E step), against a local relay built from this branch: - A non-member or an unknown value is refused. - kind:39000 by `#d` carries `unlisted` and `public`, and not `hidden`. - kind:39000 discovery without `#d`: non-members don't see the channel, members do. - History and NIP-50 search: unnamed, a non-member doesn't see the channel's messages; with `#h`, they do; a member sees them unnamed. - A kind:9021 join works, and the joiner then lists the channel. - Listing it again shows it to everyone. - A reader whose channel set was cached before each change sees the change at once. I ran this against a relay with the cache invalidation removed, and it failed. Relay E2E (`test_nip29_solo_share_and_convert_wire`, added to the CI relay E2E step), each flow as a single event: - kind:9007 with an unknown `unlisted` value is refused. A chat created with `unlisted true` publishes the flag, and stays unlisted after a plain `visibility open`. - Share (open + unlisted + `join_role guest` in one kind:9002): a non-member doesn't list the chat. They read it by `#h`, both history and a live message, and can't post. A kind:9021 join lists it for them as a read-only guest. A kind:9022 leave unlists it again, and it stays readable by `#h`. - Unshare (`visibility private`): the viewer's live subscription gets CLOSED, and a new `#h` read is refused. - Convert (`["t", ""]` + `unlisted false`): the Solo label is cleared, and a non-member finds the chat in discovery. - I ran this against a relay that dropped the kind:9007 flag, and it failed. Also run: `cargo test` for buzz-db, buzz-sdk, buzz-cli, buzz-core, buzz-relay and buzz-test-client; the Postgres lane for buzz-db and buzz-relay (1045 tests); and the existing unlisted, announce, departure, guest, role-change and NIP-43 snapshot wire tests. In the lane, two tests failed on pool timeouts (`resend_validated_after_the_first_commit_is_a_duplicate`, `edit_replaces_and_clears_labels`) and passed when rerun alone. An earlier run had the same kind of flake: `routed_fallback_spends_one_acquire_budget_when_aurora_cache_is_cold` (a timing budget) and `resent_edit_is_a_duplicate` (a pool timeout). In a full local `e2e_relay` run, three tests outside CI's list also failed (`test_invite_*` twice, `test_unarchive_emits_member_added_notification`). They fail the same way on a relay built from `main`. ## Not in this PR - The buzz-app follow-up: support open Solo chats, the join-from-card view, the large-audience prompt, and gating on `buzz-unlisted-channels`. - A NIP-CL update. The behavior is documented in NOSTR.md ("Unlisted channels"). buzz-review-completed --------- Signed-off-by: Bradley Axen <baxen@squareup.com> Signed-off-by: Luke Tornquist <tornquist@squareup.com> Co-authored-by: ART <ea39c1c8acf57180161ef4ba4ed68abf8589f5291956b909a5aa991fc66664ca@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Co-authored-by: mbot <3754f8729004d95654c46dbab3129e4ab9ef05cc2534e2a3fbfc155983bd637b@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz> Co-authored-by: Luke Tornquist <tornquist@squareup.com> 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.