d97f6b4c6e
🤖 ## Summary Channels are Buzz's main way to control access, but today they cannot separate reading from writing. In an open channel, anyone who can read can also write. So there is no way to say "many people read, a few people write". Announcements, release feeds, plugin release records and shared configuration all need that. This PR adds **announce channels**: anyone can follow and read them, but only members can post. It does this with one new channel setting and without changing what any role means. - **Roles mean the same thing in every channel.** A *guest* can read and leave, but cannot write. A *member* (or *bot*) can write. *Admins* and *owners* also manage the channel. The relay already had the guest role, but no client used it until now. - **A new setting, `join_role` (`member` | `guest`), picks the role a new person gets** when nobody chooses one: when they join by themselves, or when someone adds them without a role. The default, `member`, keeps today's behavior for every existing channel. - **An open channel with `join_role = guest` is an announce channel.** Anyone can find, read and join it. People who join are guests, so they cannot write until someone makes them a member. The relay enforces these rules, so a client cannot get around them. What each role can do (the same in every channel): | Action | Guest | Member or bot | Admin / owner | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Read, leave | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Post, reply, edit, delete own, react, artifacts, canvas, forum, pins, topic, typing, workflow messages, save or run workflows, huddles | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Add people | ❌ | ✅ as member, guest or bot | ✅ any role | | Make a guest a member (person or agent) | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | Any other role change | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Change name, about, visibility, TTL, `join_role` | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | Other rules: - **Joining by yourself.** A person who joins (kind:9021), or adds themselves (kind:9000 with their own key), gets the channel's `join_role`. They may ask for `join_role` or a lower role, never a higher one. So in an announce channel nobody can join as a member by themselves. - **Non-members.** A non-member may write only where joining would let them write: an open channel with `join_role = member`. That is today's behavior for open channels. - **Agents.** Agents follow the same rules as people. Any member who can write may make a guest agent a member. Limits that only an agent's owner may lift belong to the later IFC work (its "restricted" agent level), not to this PR. That work only refuses more actions, so it can be added later without breaking anything here. - **Leaving always works.** A member may leave an archived channel too (kind:9022, or kind:9001 naming themselves). The last owner still cannot leave. - **Agent owners keep edit and delete.** Today the human owner of an agent can edit (kind:40003) and delete (kind:9005) that agent's messages without being a member. This PR keeps that existing behavior in announce channels too, and documents and tests it. It does not let the owner post. - **Changing the setting changes no roles.** Existing members can still write after a change to `guest`. Existing guests stay read-only after a change back to `member`. A refused write gets `restricted: only members can post in this channel`. ## Details - **One write rule.** The relay's channel write check decides from the actor's role and the channel's `join_role`. Some event types skip that check and run their own: message edit, deleting your own message (kind:9005), topic and purpose (kind:9002), add-member (kind:9000), workflow messages and joining a huddle. Each of these now uses the same rule. Membership changes (add, remove, leave) do not need write access, so a guest can always leave. If the relay finds a stored `join_role` value it does not know, it treats it as `guest`, so an unknown value can never give more access. - **Admission is decided in the database transaction.** The membership write (`put_member`) makes the whole admission decision inside its transaction, after it takes the channel's membership lock: `join_role` for a missing role tag, the self-join ceiling, guests cannot add people, who may grant admin or owner, and role changes (`MemberRole::may_change_role`). The relay's request check uses the same rules, but the database is the authority, so a write that skips the request check cannot get around them. A change to `visibility` or `join_role` takes the same lock, so an add and a setting change cannot interleave. - **No creator exception.** `put_member` used to give owner to a channel's creator who added themselves to a private channel without an active membership. A removed creator could use that: their join (kind:9021) passes the open-channel check, the channel becomes private before the join takes the membership lock, and the join restored them as owner. Channel creation already makes the creator owner in the same transaction, so the exception is removed. A removed creator is now admitted like anyone else. - **Huddles.** Joining a huddle needs write access in the huddle channel **and** in its parent channel. The relay checks both before the join. When it commits the join, it applies the same rule again while it holds both channels' membership locks: a member needs a role that can post, and a non-member needs an open channel whose `join_role` is `member`. A guest in either channel cannot join. A join is also refused when the joiner loses membership or the channel's `join_role` changes before the commit. - **One lock order.** Each writer that takes more than one of a channel's locks takes them in this order: membership lock, TTL lock, channel row. Settings changes, roster publication, TTL refresh and huddle joins all use this order. Before this change, a `join_role` change on an ephemeral channel at the same time as a roster publication could deadlock. - **Workflows.** Saving a workflow (kind:30620) skips the generic write check, so it now checks the sender's role itself and needs a writing role before anything is stored. Every path that starts a workflow run, including the manual trigger (kind:46020), needs the workflow's owner to hold a writing role now (and an elevated role for an elevated workflow). So a workflow saved while its owner was a member stops running after the owner is made a guest. - **Channel names are checked before storage.** kind:9002 and kind:9007 refuse a name longer than the `channels.name` column (255 characters) before the event is stored. Before this, the relay accepted the event, then the name update failed, and the rest of the update (for example `join_role`) was silently skipped. This PR only adds this check. Storing the event and applying the update in one transaction is a larger change, and it is not in this PR. - **Changing the setting.** Owners and admins send a channel-metadata update (kind:9002) with `["join_role", "guest"]` or `["join_role", "member"]`. Buzz applies these updates as partial updates; a missing tag means "no change". The relay posts a `join_role_changed` system message in the channel. - **What clients see.** The relay signs a channel description event (kind:39000) that clients read. One shared builder now writes it for both the relay and the `buzz-admin` backfill, which had a copy that had drifted from the relay's. It always publishes an explicit `["join_role", …]` tag, plus the standard NIP-29 group access flags: | `visibility` | `join_role` | `public` / `private` | `restricted` | `closed` | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | open | `member` | public | | | | open | `guest` | public | ✓ | | | private | either | private | ✓ | ✓ | This also fixes an old bug: `closed` ("join requests are ignored") was published for every channel, even open channels that accept joins. - **CLI and SDK.** `buzz channels update --join-role guest|member`. `buzz_sdk::build_update_channel` takes a new `join_role` argument and always writes it as an explicit tag. - **Docs.** `NOSTR.md` has an "Announce channels" section with the role table and the flag table. - **Tests.** Relay end-to-end tests, run in the CI relay E2E step: - `test_nip29_announce_channel_wire`: who can set `join_role`, the kind:39000 flags, joining as a guest, refused guest and non-member posts, reactions and adds, member posts, a member making a guest a member who then posts, changing the setting back without changing roles, and leaving. - `test_nip29_member_raises_guest_agent`: a member who is not the agent's owner can make a guest agent a member. - `test_nip29_announce_channel_wire_workflow_send_needs_write_role`: a guest's workflow message is refused; a member's is accepted. - `test_nip29_departure_wire_archived_channel_allows_self_leave`: guests and members can leave an archived channel. - `test_private_channel_any_member_can_invite` now expects a private-channel guest to be refused when it adds someone (it used to expect success). - `test_nip29_announce_channel_wire_workflow_commands_need_write_role`: saving and triggering a workflow, by a member and by a guest, in announce and normal channels; a guest cannot run a workflow saved while it was a member. - `test_nip29_announce_channel_wire_overlong_name_is_refused_before_storage`: a kind:9002 with an overlong name and `join_role` is refused, and kind:39000 still shows the old settings. - `test_nip29_announce_channel_wire_agent_owner_exception`: an agent's owner, as a guest and as a non-member, can edit and delete the agent's messages, while ordinary guests are still refused. - `test_nip29_guest_is_read_only_in_normal_channel`: a guest in an ordinary channel cannot write, and joining an ordinary channel still gives `member`. Unit tables cover the self-join rule for each `join_role`, and every actor, current role and requested role for the role-change rule. Database tests check the admission rules in `put_member` (`put_member_enforces_announce_admission`), that an add which waits on an uncommitted change to `guest` is decided on the new setting (`put_member_waits_for_a_concurrent_join_role_change`), and that a member can make a guest a member but not an admin. Unit tests cover the name limit and the workflow owner rule (`owner_authority_denies_roles_that_cannot_write`). A relay test covers huddle joins with different roles in the huddle and its parent, and a commit after a demotion, a `join_role` change or a lost membership (`huddle_join_needs_a_write_role_in_the_huddle_and_its_parent`). Lock-order tests: `join_role_change_waits_for_a_roster_publication_on_an_ephemeral_channel` reproduced a real deadlock (`40P01`) against the old order. `f2d_join_lock_order_serializes_membership_and_settings_writers` checks that membership and settings writers wait for a join and then succeed. `removed_creator_cannot_rejoin_a_private_channel` checks that `put_member` refuses a removed creator on a private channel, and `removed_creator_join_racing_a_private_switch_is_refused` holds the membership lock so a removed creator's kind:9021 passes the open-channel check, then makes the channel private before the join continues. Each new test was run against the old code and failed. ## Rollout 1. **Before the deploy, count guest rows** (`SELECT count(*) FROM channel_members WHERE role = 'guest' AND removed_at IS NULL`). We expect none. Any guest that exists loses the ability to post, change the topic and add people when this ships. If some exist, decide first whether to make them members. 2. Deploy. Every channel stays `join_role = member`, so nothing else changes. 3. **Do not set any channel to `join_role = guest` until no old relay is running.** Old relays ignore the column, so they would let guests and non-members write in that channel. 4. Rerun the `buzz-admin` channel reconcile so open channels drop the wrong `closed` flag. ## Migration and rollback - Migration `0067` adds `channels.join_role TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT 'member'` with a CHECK constraint. Postgres stores a constant default in table metadata, so existing rows are not rewritten and there is no backfill. The relay runs the migration at startup. - Existing channels keep the old `closed` flag until their next change, or until the reconcile in Rollout step 4. - **Before rolling back the relay**, set every announce channel back to `join_role = member`. An older relay ignores the column and does not stop guests from writing, so those channels would accept posts from their guests and give `member` to new joiners again. ## Not in this PR Client UI: a Follow button, hiding the composer for guests, and an admin toggle. Clients that ignore the new tag keep working. A guest who tries to post sees the `restricted` error. ## Stack 1. #8143 (this PR): announce channels 2. #8494: store the bot role only for keys with a recorded agent owner --------- Signed-off-by: Logan Johnson <loganj@squareup.com> Co-authored-by: Larry <627498bd4bd1f281a16431e3c6cce3b5c25b6692798c78672298aefbf2f8f8b5@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.