d34c9c2c9b
## Summary The PR critical path on main push [run 37635224099](https://github.com/block/buzz/actions/runs/37635224099) (`e097c4299`) was about 42 minutes: - **Desktop Core** took 41 min. It ran frontend checks, two clippy graphs, the Tauri suite, the mesh-llm suite and every compiled-flag state one after another. The compiled-flag step alone took 16m51. - **Relay artifact producer → Desktop E2E Integration** took about 31 min. The producer built the relay binaries (5m07), the backend integration archive (4m41) and the PostgreSQL archive (8m18) one after another. - **Desktop Smoke E2E** took 19–24 min per shard across 4 shards, with 82 min of tests in total. This PR attacks all three. ### 1. Run each compiled-flag state once (`Justfile`) | Previous step | Cost | Why it's redundant | |---|---|---| | Clean state: full `buzz_lib` suite (`--lib`) | 3m27 run | `desktop-tauri-test` runs the same suite in the same compile state one step earlier. When `BUZZ_TEST_EXPECTED_AGENT_ACCESS_OWNER_ONLY` is unset, the expected value already defaults to `false` in non-owner-only builds (`runtime/test_fixtures.rs`, `agents_tests.rs`). | | Internal state: auto-connect and owner-only built separately | 1m22 + 1m06 + 56s across three recompiles | Internal release packaging always sets both capabilities together, so building owner-only without auto-connect tests a configuration that never ships. The extra 56s happens because a bare `cargo test <filter>` builds every target, not just the `--lib` harness. | | Demo state: `cargo test --workspace` | ~30s more than `--lib` | `buzz-terminal` and the `tests/*.rs` integration tests don't read any `BUZZ_BUILD_*` variable or `buzz_lib`, so they ran the same binaries a second time. | A fourth cost was hidden: every recipe invocation spent ~1m20 recompiling `buzz-desktop` to the *same* unit hash `desktop-tauri-test` had just built. `_ensure-sidecar-stubs` ran `touch` on every sidecar stub on each run. `tauri-build` emits `rerun-if-changed` for each `externalBin`, so the new mtimes reran `build.rs` and recompiled the crate. Stubs are now created only when they're missing. This also speeds up any local `desktop-tauri-*` recipe run back-to-back. After this change: - **Clean state:** runs only the two compiled-flag assertions (`compiled_flag_matches_expected`, `compiled_policy_matches_expected`) with `expected=false`. No recompile. - **Internal state:** one compile with `BUZZ_BUILD_AUTO_CONNECT_DEFAULT_RELAY=1` and `BUZZ_BUILD_AGENT_ACCESS_OWNER_ONLY=1`. It runs both assertions with `expected=true`, then the full `buzz_lib` suite. The suite now runs with auto-connect enabled as well, which matches the shipped internal build more closely than before. - **Auto-connect-only state (assertions only):** auto-connect `true`, owner-only `false`. The two capabilities are documented as independent. Without this state, a `build.rs` block that read the other capability's variable would pass, because every other state sets both or neither. - **Demo state:** one compile with only `BUZZ_BUILD_DEMO_SLUG`. It asserts the slug and asserts both capabilities stay `false`, then runs the full `buzz_lib` suite. - The recipe clears the three toggled `BUZZ_BUILD_*` capability variables and any caller `BUZZ_TEST_EXPECTED_*` values up front. Each state exports its own values in a subshell. Every invocation uses `--lib`, so each state compiles one test harness. - Each ignored-assertion run requires exactly one passing test per name filter. Previously, a renamed or un-ignored assertion matched nothing and passed silently. - The 32-character demo-name rejection check is unchanged. The full-suite reruns in the internal and demo states are kept on purpose. They are the only coverage that the whole suite holds up in those two shipped build shapes. Estimate: the compiled-flag work goes from about 17 min to about 11. ### 2. Split Desktop Core into parallel, path-gated lanes (`_ci-desktop.yml`) - **Desktop JS:** `desktop-check`, `desktop-test` and `desktop-build`. These compile no Rust, but some node:test cases read relay and DB crate sources to pin shared constants (for example `relayReconnectReplay.test.mjs`). So the job runs on desktop *and* Rust changes, in parallel with the Tauri lanes. `lefthook.yml` notes this as a deliberate local deviation. - **Desktop Tauri (core | mesh | compiled-flags):** a matrix of parallel Rust lanes. - `core` and `compiled-flags` share the existing `desktop-core` Rust cache key, so they start warm. `compiled-flags` restores it read-only. - `mesh` keeps its own cache because `mesh-llm` pulls a different dependency graph. - **Smoke E2E and the Windows frontend build** compile no Rust and read no crate sources, so they no longer run for Rust-only changes. - **Smoke E2E goes from 4 to 10 shards.** Playwright shards by test count, not duration. A simulation from the per-test durations in run 37635224099 reproduces the observed 4-shard split exactly. With 10 shards, the slowest shard runs about 11 min of tests. - **The `Desktop` gate is stricter.** Each selected job must succeed and each unselected job must be skipped, so a mis-gated job can't pass silently. The required check context (`Desktop`) is unchanged. `scripts/ci-required-gates.test.mjs` pins each job's `if:` to the gate's selection expression, and checks which jobs a Rust-only, desktop-only, Tauri, push, and empty selection pick. - **Path-filter fixes:** - The `desktop` filter now includes `_ci-desktop.yml`, `ci.yml` and `Justfile` (which holds the desktop recipes), so edits to them run the frontend lanes. - The `rust` filter now matches `Justfile`. It still named the pre-rename `justfile`, so a `Justfile`-only change selected no Rust suites. - `scripts/ci-selection.test.mjs` gains `Justfile` and desktop-workflow scenarios, and the shared-workflow scenario now expects `desktop`. - **Dead step removed:** the failure-only Playwright artifact upload in the old Core job never had anything to upload, because that job never ran Playwright. ### 3. Build relay artifacts in parallel (`_ci-relay.yml`) - **The producer is now a 3-way matrix** (`relay-binaries`, `backend-integration-tests`, `postgres-tests`). - Each lane has its own exact-source cache entry and uploads `desktop-e2e-relay-<artifact>`. - Consumers download `desktop-e2e-relay-*` into `target/ci`, so their paths are unchanged. - The required `Desktop E2E Relay` context still reads the producer job's aggregate result. - **Rust cache saving:** all lanes restore the existing Rust cache key, but only the widest lane (`postgres-tests`) saves it. Otherwise the fastest lane could overwrite it with a narrower target dir. - **Desktop E2E Integration goes from 2 to 3 shards.** Shard labels now use `strategy.job-total`. ### 4. Bound degraded apt steps (`scripts/ci-apt-retry.sh`) - With more shards, more runs hit the occasional degraded Ubuntu mirror. On this PR, a Tauri lane ran `apt-get install` for 27 minutes: apt's `Acquire` timeouts kept firing, but apt kept re-queuing the requests and never failed. Separately, three Smoke shards stalled silently in `playwright install-deps` (no output after `InRelease`) until the job timeout. Healthy apt steps across four recent runs finished in at most 238s. - Every apt-backed step in Desktop and Integration now runs through `scripts/ci-apt-retry.sh`. The script writes the apt options to `apt.conf.d`, so Playwright's own apt-get calls get them too. It kills each attempt after 7 minutes (90s for `apt-get update`). Between attempts it stops any `apt-get` or `dpkg` the attempt left running, repairs dpkg under its own 60s deadline, and retries up to 3 times. The stop matters for `playwright install-deps`, which runs `sudo sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get install ..."`: sudo puts its command in a new process group, so the deadline's signal stops `sh` and apt-get survives holding the dpkg lock (seen on Smoke shard 8 of run 37696815557, and reproduced with real sudo). - Downloaded `.deb`s are kept between attempts, so a retry resumes where the last one stopped. Against a mirror that stays degraded, this bounds each wrapped command at about 25 minutes rather than recovering it. The Tauri lanes wrap two commands, `apt-get update` (about 8.5 minutes worst case) and `apt-get install` (about 25), so about 34 minutes together. Job timeouts are sized to fit that bound plus the job's own work: Tauri 55m (lanes take up to ~15m), Integration 40m, and Smoke 45m. A degraded mirror therefore ends with the wrapper's error instead of a silent job timeout. - **The retry has already fired on this PR.** In [run 37703795342](https://github.com/block/buzz/actions/runs/37703795342), `playwright install-deps` on Integration shard 1/3 hit the 420s attempt deadline. The second attempt started about 1.4s later, downloaded and configured the real packages, and succeeded. The step took 526s (8m46), and that shard took 17m24 while the other two took about 5m. Healthy installs have taken at most 238s, so 420s leaves headroom, and a slow mirror costs one attempt instead of the job. - Between attempts the script stops **every** `apt-get`/`dpkg` on the machine, not only the ones it started. That's intentional: on a hosted runner any other one would hold the same dpkg lock. It assumes an ephemeral runner, and the script says not to use it on a self-hosted runner or a developer machine. - `scripts/ci-apt-retry.test.mjs` covers the following with a fake `sudo`: success, retry, the attempt budget, a stalled attempt, a stalled dpkg repair, an apt-get that escapes the attempt's process group (on a retry and on the final attempt), and usage. It needs Linux (GNU `timeout`, `flock`, `setsid`, procps), so it skips on other platforms. CI runs it on Ubuntu. ### What got simpler - **Compiled-flag recipe:** two full-suite runs instead of three, six cargo invocations instead of eight, and sidecar stubs no longer invalidate the desktop build cache. - **Path selection:** each desktop job declares only the paths that actually affect it. The stale `justfile` filter and a dead artifact step are gone. - **Apt options:** set once in `apt.conf.d` by one script, instead of as repeated `-o Acquire...` flags on each apt call. - **Shard counts:** the shard count is written once per matrix, not repeated in names and commands. ### Cost - **More runners:** a full run uses more runner jobs. Smoke E2E goes from 4 to 10 jobs, Desktop Core from 1 to 4, the relay producer from 1 to 3, and Integration from 2 to 3. - **Fewer runners on single-area PRs:** desktop-only PRs skip the Rust lanes, and Rust-only PRs skip Smoke E2E and the Windows build. - **One extra Rust cache entry:** `desktop-mesh`. ### Related issue None found. ### Testing Blox, compiled-flag recipe at `77b9874b`: - [x] Recipe passes with output redirected to a file. The log keeps all 4 state headers, the ignored assertions ran 2/2/2/3, and both full suites passed (`3423 passed`). - [x] A second back-to-back run shows no clean-state `Compiling buzz-desktop`. - [x] Mutation tests all fail as required: - `build.rs` auto-connect reads the owner-only var: rc=101. - The reverse swap: rc=101. - Rename `compiled_policy_matches_expected`: rc=1. - Wrong owner-only expectation: rc=101. - [ ] `just ci` Workflows: - [x] `actionlint` on `_ci-desktop.yml`, `_ci-relay.yml` and `ci.yml`: clean. - [x] `scripts/test-ci-required-context-isolation.sh`: passes. - [x] GitHub Actions: runs [37701003713](https://github.com/block/buzz/actions/runs/37701003713) and [37703795342](https://github.com/block/buzz/actions/runs/37703795342) took 27m09 and 28m51. Before this PR, PR runs had a median of 40.0m (n=21) and main pushes took about 42m. These are observations across mixed runner images, not a measured causal speedup. - [x] Selection, gate and apt suites (74/74 on Linux), `actionlint` and `bash -n` on Blox at tree `db9725fe`. --------- 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
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.