d090ac24bb
## Summary Mobile does background work nobody sees, and it waits on round trips it doesn't need. This PR fixes four things: - **Chats you've left let go.** A chat with no listener for 30 s drops its live and typing subscriptions. Coming back shows the cached timeline right away, then resubscribes and catches up. - **No requests before AUTH.** The relay rejects any REQ that arrives before NIP-42 AUTH completes. History requests are now held until the socket authenticates, and they flush after the rate-limit gate. Live subscriptions skip their REQ, and the replay on connect sends it. `auth-required` is terminal for a live subscription, so a pre-AUTH live REQ could be dropped for good. - **Resume reconciles the channel list once.** `resumed` is published before the session hears about it. So the channel list now decides one microtask later: if the session is reconnecting, the connect does the reconcile. - **The 60 s backstop only runs in the foreground on a connected session.** After an OS suspension, the missed tick fires at unfreeze, about 450 ms before the app hears `resumed`, while the session still looks connected. Without this, that tick triggered a second full sync. Scope note: while the app is in the foreground, the backstop still re-downloads membership every 60 s. That matches desktop, which refetches every 60 s while focused. To drop it, mobile would need to subscribe to the live membership notices (44100/44101), as desktop does. That would be a follow-up. ### Related issue N/A. This is follow-up work from the mobile perf dive. None found. ## Before and after Simulator setup: iPhone 18 Pro simulator, debug build, a local relay behind a proxy that adds ~120 ms RTT, and a seeded account with 120 channels. I scripted one identical run against each build: 1. Open 5 channels. 2. Visit 20 more channels. 3. Wait 40 s. 4. Stay idle in the foreground for 3 min. 5. Go to the background for 3 min. 6. Resume. `main` is `ca3be5501`; the branch is `d77c4e86f`. The last amend changed only test names. Since then, chat history waits for the live EOSE again (see the note below), so channel open is back to `main`'s order. | | `main` | this PR | |---|---|---| | Live subscriptions after visiting 20 chats | 61 | 11 | | Resume: membership reads | 2 (244 kB) | 1 (122 kB) | | Resume: websocket REQs | 36 | 31 | | Resume: REQs sent before AUTH | 9 | 0 | | Resume: REQs rejected as `auth-required` | 2 | 0 | | Idle foreground, 3 min | 3 membership reads, 12 REQs | same | Notes: - **Channel open:** an earlier revision requested history without waiting for EOSE, which cut the median open from 297 ms to 197 ms. Review showed it can lose a message. The relay registers the live REQ only after its access checks, so a message committed in between reached neither the window read nor the subscription. A timestamp overlap only covers messages signed within it. Keeping that speedup safely would mean a second window read on every open, so it's left out. - **Idle foreground is unchanged by design.** See the scope note above. - **Background traffic:** the simulator suspends the app shortly after it leaves the foreground, so both builds sent almost nothing during the 3 minutes in the background. The backstop fix shows up at unfreeze instead, as the missing second membership read. - **Resume inbound events:** in this one run, events received over the websocket on resume were 247 kB on `main` and 338 kB on the branch. I haven't attributed the difference. ## Test These extend the existing journeys, plus one new journey: - **`channel_messages_journey_test`:** - The window read waits for the live REQ's admission, and a message signed a minute earlier but committed before admission shows up. - After the listener leaves, the chat keeps following for 29 s and stops at 31 s. - Coming back shows the cached rows immediately, then catches up on a message sent while away. - **`relay_session_test`:** a stale-connected resume sends nothing before AUTH. Then exactly one history REQ and one live REQ go out after AUTH. - **New `channels_sync_journey_test`:** drives the real lifecycle, session and channel notifier against `FakeRelay`: - A backgrounding just before a backstop tick sends nothing. - A resume after the session paused syncs once. - An OS-suspension resume with AUTH held syncs once, after AUTH, and sends no REQ before it. - **`FakeRelay`:** gained `holdReq`, `holdAuth`, `before_id` pagination and an injectable clock. Each guard was mutation-checked, and every mutation failed its test: - live REQ sent before AUTH - history sent before AUTH - resume refresh not deferred - backstop without the lifecycle check - history read alongside the live REQ - a 30-day detach delay Follow-up, not in this PR: a history REQ already in flight on a socket that gets replaced still waits for its 8 s timeout. Princess Donut found this in review; it predates this change. ## Validation - `flutter analyze`: clean - Full mobile suite at `678617b`: 3,696 passed - Court review (Princess Donut on the relay session, Mongo on chat subscriptions, Mordecai on the channel list plus a challenge pass): no blocking findings. The rate-limit flush ordering came from that review. **Human test:** Wes ran `da5077d` on the simulator with his real account and confirmed it works. `460dc35` then fixed a review blocker: a chat rebuilt while detached stayed detached. A retest of that path is pending: leave a chat for more than 30 s, background the app for more than 5 s, resume, then reopen the chat. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) --------- Signed-off-by: Wes <wesbillman@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Carl <32a2e2c9d428ee08902cab75d956da2c1d235a22d4766b0dd4138bf6e2e5db1d@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.