Buzz for VS Code

A community extension for Buzz, the open-source team chat by Block where people and AI agents work together. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Block.

⬇ Install from the VS Code Marketplace

Or in VS Code: Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X) → search for Buzz for VS Code → Install.

Your Buzz agents, next to your code. In Buzz, people and AI agents share one chat, but the code they talk about is in your editor: an agent answers with a branch, a commit or a file, and you switch windows to find it. Buzz for VS Code brings the conversation, the agents' work and the history of each file into VS Code.

• The chat in the editor. Channels, threads and direct messages, live over the relay; mentions, search, and a draft per thread.
• Agent work as a diff. A branch or commit an agent reports opens in VS Code's changes editor, read from the agents' own git checkout without touching it. A change proposed in a message opens as a diff and, if you turn it on, applies as an unsaved, undoable edit.
• Buzz Lens. Open a file and see which conversations were about it, on the lines they mention.
• Context in one step. Send the selection, a problem or terminal output to an agent, or a git diff to a channel.
• Careful with your machine. Your key is kept in VS Code's SecretStorage and never written to a file or a log, processes start without a shell, the chat runs under a strict Content Security Policy, and nothing is written to your files unless you ask.

▶ Watch the 1-minute demo on YouTube: channels, agent proposals as diffs, branch and commit diffs, errors sent to an agent, search, Jira cards and Buzz Lens, with sample data.

The interface is in English and Turkish: switch with EN / TR at the top right of the chat, or with the buzz.language setting.

Docs: Architecture · Testing · Security · Contributing · Changelog

Status: version 0.8.8. On Windows 11 the 151 unit tests and the 29 harnesses (573 checks) pass; 11 unit tests wait for a real Buzz CLI or a recording of its answers and are skipped without one. The GitHub Actions workflow is set up to run the same on Ubuntu and Windows. TESTING.md says what is covered, the measured coverage, and what is not tested.

What you need

• VS Code 1.90 or newer, on Windows, macOS or Linux.
• Buzz Desktop, installed and opened once. It installs the buzz command-line tool the extension talks to, and holds your identity. Agents run inside Buzz Desktop, so they answer while it is open.
• Your Nostr private key from Buzz Desktop (Settings → Identity → Copy private key). It goes into VS Code's encrypted SecretStorage and nowhere else.
• Optional: a Jira server, for issue links and cards.

Quick start

1. Install Buzz for VS Code from the VS Code Marketplace: open Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X, on a Mac Cmd+Shift+X), search for Buzz for VS Code and click Install, or run code --install-extension semihdesticioglu.buzz-for-vscode. Updates then arrive by themselves. Without access to the Marketplace, download the .vsix from the releases and install it with Extensions → ··· → Install from VSIX….
2. Run Buzz: Setup from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P, on a Mac Cmd+Shift+P). It finds the CLI, reads the relay address from ~/.buzz/AGENTS.md, asks for your key and tests the connection.
3. Click the bee in the Activity Bar. Pick a channel note at the top and a thread on the left, and write. Type @ to mention an agent or a person; ⊕ Selection (or Alt+B, on a Mac Option+B) adds the code you selected.

Optional: Buzz: Connect Jira asks for your Jira address, the project keys to link (ABC, XYZ) and a read-only token. Issue keys in messages become links with hover cards.

If the CLI is somewhere unusual, Setup asks for it. By default it is looked for at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Buzz\buzz.exe on Windows, ~/.local/bin/buzz and the app bundle on a Mac, and on PATH everywhere (buzz.cliPath overrides).

Features

Chat

• Channels sit on top as colored notes; direct messages are grey notes, one per person or agent (Buzz may hold several conversations with the same people; the note shows them together, like Buzz Desktop). The open channel's note shows how many of its agents are online.
• The left column lists the channel's threads: first message, participants, reply count and who wrote last; the most recently active thread is on top. It reads as many pages as it takes to fill the screen.
• Clicking a thread opens that conversation on the right, complete however long it is, and your message goes there as a reply. The reply counts in the list count what is loaded; opening a thread loads all of it. ＋ New thread starts a new thread in the channel. Replies to a reply are shown under the message they answer.
• In the narrow side bar you see the thread list first and go back with ← Threads. ⤢ moves the chat to a wide editor tab with two columns (the side bar closes) and ⤡ in the tab brings it back. The chat remembers which one you use: a notification, the status bar and the commands open it there, also after a reload.
• Enter sends, Shift+Enter adds a line. Type @ to mention an agent or a person.
• What you type stays with its thread: each thread and each channel's New thread keeps its own draft (with the people you mentioned and the message you answer), threads with a draft carry a ✎ in the list, and the drafts are still there in the editor tab and after a reload.
• Search above the thread list looks through the whole history you can read, in this channel or (toggle) in every channel, and lists the threads that match; ⌕ in the thread header filters the open thread as you type.
• ＋ at the end of the channel notes (also in the view's title bar): a new channel, joining an open channel of the workspace, or adding a person or an agent to the channel.
• Messages from the same person within 5 minutes are grouped; day separators split the conversation; long answers fold behind "Show more". Code blocks use your theme's colors, with a language label and a Copy button.
• File references such as pipeline/steps/seller_score.py:142 open the file at that line (the agents' copy first, see below; if several workspace files match, you choose).

Who is around

• A green dot means online and a yellow dot means away: on avatars in messages and in the thread list, on direct message notes and in the @ menu.
• "X is typing…" and "@agent is working…" come from Buzz's own typing signals over the live connection. Threads with activity show moving dots in the list.
• When you mention an agent and no signal arrives, the chat shows "waiting for @agent…" (not "working") for up to three minutes, unless Buzz reports that agent as offline. "Working…" appears only on the agent's own signal, as in Buzz Desktop.
• Agents run inside Buzz Desktop. When every agent of the channel is offline, a bar at the top says so and Open Buzz Desktop starts it; the bar disappears as they come online. Mentioning an agent that is offline gets a notice instead of a silent wait.

Agent proposals

When an agent answers with a change for a file, the code block gets a Proposed change bar:

• Show diff opens VS Code's diff view: the agents' version of the file on the left (see The agents' copy), the proposal on the right.
• Whether and how the change is made stays with you and the agents: answer in the thread as usual.
• With buzz.proposals.applyLocally on, there is also Apply: it writes the change into your own workspace without saving it, and a notification offers Save and Undo.

Three shapes are recognised: a unified diff with @@ hunks (several files and new files work; small line-number drift is tolerated); - old / + new lines in a diff block that follows a path/to/file.py:42 reference; and a code block that follows a line range such as path/to/file.py:L10-L20, when the block's language fits the file.

If the lines to change are no longer in the file, or match in more than one place, the chat says so and nothing is changed. A change that is already in the file is not applied twice. A proposal can only write inside the workspace (never outside it or into .git). For a line-number proposal on a file that changed after the message was written, you are asked to check the diff first. Undo only restores files you have not edited since.

Work an agent reports (branch or commit)

Most agents commit their work and report the branch and commit (feature/abc-123-fix-ranking, commit 9c4e2b7). Such a message gets a bar with Show diff: VS Code's changes editor opens with every file the work changed, read from the agents' repository.

• For a branch, the changes are measured from where it left buzz, and this still works after it was merged.
• For a commit, the changes are against its parent.
• With both in one message you choose.
• A branch the agent is still working on (no commits of its own yet) shows its uncommitted changes, marked as such, from wherever the branch is checked out: the agents' folder or one of its git worktrees (agents often keep one per task). Nothing from other work is shown.

A base mentioned in passing ("based on buzz 6b0f19d") is not taken as the work, and code blocks are ignored.

The agents' copy

The agents work in their own git checkout (by default every repository under ~/.buzz/REPOS) and switch branches there during the day. The extension reads the agents' code from one branch of it, buzz by default (buzz.agentBranch), through git, so what you see does not change when an agent checks out another branch.

• File references in messages open the agents' version of the file, read-only. If it isn't there, your workspace is searched.
• Show diff compares a proposal with that version, and Buzz Lens works on these files too.
• The status bar shows which branch and commit you are looking at (🔒 agents' copy: buzz @ 4f2ea21). Click it, or run Buzz: Open a file from the agents' copy, to open any file of that branch.
• Nothing is ever written into the agents' folder. When the branch moves, open files are read again.

Buzz Lens: what was said about this code

Open a file and Buzz marks the code that was discussed:

• a bee in the gutter next to the line a conversation is about (found through the names it uses, such as ORDER_STATUS, or the line number written next to the file name);
• hover the line to see the conversation, marked "from Buzz, not written in the file", with Open in chat;
• the status bar counts the file's conversations (💬 1 Buzz thread); click it to pick one.

Nothing appears inside the code itself. If you prefer GitLens-style gray lines above the code, turn on buzz.lens.inline.

• Nothing is stored and nothing goes into the repository: the extension runs Buzz's message search for the file name when the file opens and keeps the result in memory for 5 minutes.
• The search covers the whole history Buzz lets you read, not only the threads loaded in the chat: over the live connection in pages of 500 (and in time windows when a page is full), through the CLI when there is no live connection. Buzz: Show connection log shows what each search found and how long it took.
• Everyone sees only the channels they are a member of. Deleted messages disappear from the lens too.
• A message counts when it names the file (monthly_sales.sql) or a path that fits it (sql/monthly_sales.sql); a file with the same name in another folder does not. Earlier names of the file (git renames) are searched too.
• Buzz: Refresh Buzz Lens re-reads at once; buzz.lens.enabled turns it off.

Send code, problems and terminal output to an agent

• Selection: ⊕ Selection in the chat, Alt+B / Option+B in the editor, or right-click → Buzz ▸ Add selection to chat. The code goes along with your message as a chip.
• Problems: hover a problem, open the lightbulb or press Ctrl+. (Mac: Cmd+.) and pick Send this problem to a Buzz agent; or right-click → Buzz ▸ Send problem on this line to an agent.
• Terminal: select text, right-click → Buzz ▸ Send terminal selection to an agent.
• To a channel: editor right-click → Buzz ▸ Send selection to a channel; Source Control title bar → Buzz: Send git diff to a channel (the agents you pick are mentioned). The repository address goes along without any user name or token, and SSH remotes are written as https.

Jira

Issue keys such as ABC-123 link to Jira; hovering shows a card with title, status, assignee and effort. Run Buzz: Connect Jira once: the address, the project keys, and a token. Jira Server / Data Center takes a personal access token (profile → Personal Access Tokens); Jira Cloud (*.atlassian.net) takes your account e-mail with an API token (id.atlassian.com → Security → API tokens). Either is used read-only and stored encrypted.

Live connection and notifications

• The extension keeps a live connection to the relay, like Buzz Desktop (Nostr, NIP-42 authentication), so messages and mentions arrive instantly. ● live shows at the top right. If the connection can't be opened it shows ○ polling and refreshes every few seconds. Details: Buzz: Show connection log; Buzz: Diagnostics writes what the extension sees on this computer (CLI, relay, identity, agents' repositories, Jira, Buzz Desktop) into it.
• When someone mentions you, a notification appears. The Buzz item in the status bar counts unread mentions.

Settings

Command and setting titles follow the VS Code display language (package.nls.json, package.nls.tr.json).

Privacy and security

• What leaves your machine: your messages, typing signals and reads go to your Buzz relay, through the buzz CLI and the live connection; Jira requests go to the Jira address you configured. Nothing else is contacted and there is no telemetry.
• The Nostr key and the Jira token live in VS Code's encrypted SecretStorage. They are never written to a file or a log; the key is only passed to the buzz process and used to sign the relay authentication and your typing signal. Buzz: Delete saved keys removes both.
• buzz.cliPath, buzz.relayUrl and buzz.jira.url can only be set in your user settings, not in a workspace's .vscode/settings.json, so a repository cannot point the extension at another program or server.
• The agents' repository is read-only for the extension. Your workspace changes only through Apply, which is off by default, and only inside the workspace.
• Messages are rendered with raw HTML disabled; the chat webview allows no inline scripts or styles and loads images only from the relay's host or embedded as data: URIs.

SECURITY.md describes how secrets, processes, message content and files are handled, the tests behind each point, and the known risks (for example, the signing code is the project's own and does not run in constant time). It also says how to report a vulnerability.

Troubleshooting

Buzz: Diagnostics writes what the extension sees (CLI, relay, identity, channels, agents' repositories, Jira, Buzz Desktop) into the connection log; paste that block when you report a problem.

Development

npm ci
npm run check     # lint, formatting, type check, unit tests and the bundle, as CI runs them
npm run harness   # scenario, stress and performance harnesses (Chrome or Edge for the webview ones)
npm run package   # builds the .vsix

Press F5 in VS Code to run the extension in a development window. CONTRIBUTING.md covers setup, debugging and the rules of thumb, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md how the extension is built, and docs/TESTING.md how it is tested: unit tests, harnesses that drive the real controller and the real webview (headless Chrome) through fakes of VS Code and Buzz, and stress sets for a first run, hostile input, an impatient user, a bad network and 5,000 messages.

License

Apache License 2.0, like Buzz itself. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Made by Semih Desticioğlu · LinkedIn.