e6c56ee5ee
## Summary
Before the relay opened its listener, it reconciled the NIP-43
membership snapshot for every active community. Each community costs two
writer round trips, one after the other. On a production deployment with
about 80k communities, this one step averaged 174s of a roughly 180s
boot (max 324s). Pods in an availability zone farther from the writer
took 3–4× longer than pods in the writer's zone.
The step doesn't need to block startup. The snapshots live in the shared
database, and the replicas that are already running serve the same
snapshots. A new replica has nothing of its own to repair before it
serves. The sweep before bind did the same work as the background
maintenance sweep; only the metric labels differed.
This PR:
- Removes the NIP-43 sweep that ran before bind.
- Moves the background loop into
`side_effects::spawn_nip43_membership_reconciler`. Its first sweep now
runs as soon as the task starts. Before, the loop skipped its first
tick, so the first maintenance sweep waited a full
`BUZZ_NIP43_RECONCILE_INTERVAL_SECS`.
- Runs that loop on one replica only. The replica holding the
`NIP43_RECONCILE_LOCK_KEY` session advisory lock sweeps; the others
retry the lock every `NIP43_STANDBY_RETRY` (5s, capped at the interval).
This reuses the usage-metrics leader lease (a detached Postgres
session), renamed from `UsageMetricsLeader`/`try_lock_usage_metrics` to
the generic `SessionLeader`/`try_lock_session_leader`.
- Waits a full interval after each sweep (sleep after sweep), so a sweep
longer than the interval never runs straight into the next one.
- `reconcile_nip43_membership_snapshots` is now the only entry point and
keeps its original signature (`-> Result<usize>`). It's no longer
deprecated.
### What got simpler
Deleted:
- `Nip43ReconciliationPurpose` (the `Bootstrap`/`Maintenance` purposes)
and `reconcile_nip43_membership_snapshots_with_purpose`
- `Db::bootstrap_community_hosts` and
`Db::nip43_membership_snapshot_needs_reconciliation_for_bootstrap`
- The startup progress log (`NIP-43 startup reconciliation progress`,
`nip43_progress_due`) and its test
- The `nip43_reconcile` startup phase: `StartupStep::ALL` goes from 19
to 18 steps
The leader lock reuses the existing usage-metrics lease rather than
adding a second leader primitive. `StorageAccountingLeader` is still a
near-duplicate of it; folding that in is left as identified debt.
### Trade-offs
- **Repair before serving.** A newly started replica no longer
guarantees it has repaired stale snapshots before serving. The running
fleet doesn't guarantee that today either: the background sweep is what
repairs drift, and the leader starts it as soon as it takes the lock.
- **Rollout load.** Before, every replica swept before binding, and
every replica also ran the background loop. Now there is one sweeper in
steady state, so writer load from this job drops from one sweep per
replica to one per deployment, and rollouts no longer stack boot sweeps.
Standbys add one lock attempt every 5s each.
- **Leader handoff.** When the leader's process exits (including
SIGKILL), its connection closes, Postgres releases the session lock, and
a standby retries the lock at least every `NIP43_STANDBY_RETRY` (5s) and
sweeps as soon as it gets it. Each attempt also waits for a writer
connection, so under database pressure takeover can take longer than 5s.
Before this, a standby waited a full interval (3600s in production), so
after a rollout replaced the leader nothing swept for up to an hour. If
the leader is lost with its host or network instead, the lock is held
until the database server's TCP keepalive drops the session, and nobody
sweeps meanwhile. The usage-metrics leader already has the same
exposure. The lease is checked only between sweeps, so a leader that
loses its session mid-sweep finishes that sweep while the new leader
starts one; the per-community publication lock keeps that overlap safe.
- **Snapshot window.** A missing or stale kind:13534 snapshot is served
until the leader's sweep reaches that community; before, a booting
replica blocked until it was repaired. Admission reads canonical
`relay_members`, so this window doesn't change who's admitted. It does
affect clients that read the snapshot: desktop onboarding shows the
membership-denied page to a member missing from it, the desktop/mobile
member lists and join alerts lag, and desktop mesh discovery keeps its
existing allowlist when the snapshot is missing. In production the
inline publications that keep it current have not failed since
2026-10-07, and the sweep repaired no snapshots in the last 30 days.
- **Dashboards and alerts.** The
`buzz_startup_phase_seconds{phase="nip43_reconcile"}` series stops
reporting. Anything charting or alerting on it should move to the
sweep's existing counters
(`buzz_nip43_membership_reconciliations_total`,
`buzz_nip43_membership_reconciliation_failures_total`).
### Related issue
None found.
### Merge order
#8468 is stacked on this PR. Both remove a startup phase, and with the
old fixed-length `StartupStep::ALL` array, merging both would have built
a 17-entry `[Self; 18]` that doesn't compile. Merge this PR first; #8468
makes `ALL` a slice.
### Testing
- `background_reconciler_sweeps_immediately` (private scratch database):
spawns the production reconciler with a 24h interval and 24h standby
retry, and requires the first sweep to publish a missing snapshot. Fails
if the skipped first tick is restored.
- `background_reconciler_standby_takes_over_on_short_retry` (private
scratch database): with a 24h interval and 100ms standby retry, nothing
publishes while another session holds the leader lock; once it's
released the standby must publish within 10s. Fails if the standby
sleeps the full interval again (checked by reverting that line).
- `test_usage_metrics_lock_has_single_owner_and_releases_on_drop` covers
the renamed lease.
- `maintenance_sweep_skips_archived_and_deleted_communities` now calls
the single entry point.
- Runtime E2E at `574b28b3`: two real relays sharing one database, 3600s
sweep interval, production 5s standby retry. While the leader was alive,
the standby made only lock attempts (no sweep or snapshot-comparison
reads). SIGKILL of the actual lock holder, 3/3 trials: the survivor took
the lock in 4.81–4.86s and repaired the snapshot within 10ms after that.
Both replicas served authenticated reads while the initial publication
was stalled.
- Blox, at `574b28b3`: `just fmt-check clippy security-review-check
file-size-check` passes. Every `test-unit` step and `just test` (118
suites) passes except the `buzz-acp` `git_bootstrap` native-git tests,
which fail the same way at base `b6aa5539` on Blox (environment, not
this change).
---------
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.