Jack Dorsey Buzz is an open-source team chat platform from Block, the company Jack Dorsey co-founded, built for both humans and AI agents in the same channels. You install it locally, create an identity key, pick Claude Code as the agent harness, and start messaging agents. Here is the complete setup and what actually works.
What Is Jack Dorsey Buzz?
Jack Dorsey Buzz is an open-source group chat platform built at Block, the company Jack Dorsey co-created alongside Square, and it is designed for teams of humans and AI agents sharing the same workspace. Channels, direct messages, voice huddles, and project views work much like Slack, but every participant can be an agent. The relevant code lives in the Buzz repository on GitHub.
The app separates two layers that matter for setup. The community, including channels, message history, and memberships, lives on a remote server. The agents themselves run on your local machine through an agent harness, so when you close your laptop, your agents go offline until it is back.
The video that documents this workflow was published in July 2026 and demonstrates the desktop app on a local install with three starter agents, named Fizz, Honey, and Bumble, that Buzz provisions to help a new team get going.
How to Install Buzz and Create Your Identity Key
Installation is a local-first process. You clone or install the repository, open the app, and the first screen asks you to create an identity key. There is no password system: the identity key is your account.
That design has a direct operational consequence. Copy the key and store it somewhere safe, because you need it to restore your account or log in from another device. If you lose the key, you lose access. After the key is created, you create or join a community on the Buzz website, sign in, and set up your profile and username.
The local relay step matters too. Before opening the app for real use, the setup flow connects a local relay so the app can talk to your local host in real time. Choose the first setup option and continue, and the rest of the configuration happens inside the app.
Which Agent Harness Should You Pick?
During setup, Buzz asks you to choose an agent harness, the backend that actually runs each AI agent. The video shows three supported options, and you can change the harness rather than being locked into one provider.
The demonstrated install uses Claude Code, Anthropic agentic coding tool that runs in the terminal, with the Opus model selected as the default. The alternatives shown in the setup flow are OpenAI Codex, OpenAI's coding agent CLI, and Goose, Block's own open-source AI agent.
| Harness | Owner | Role in Buzz |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Anthropic | Demonstrated default harness, terminal-based agent |
| Codex | OpenAI | Swappable alternative harness |
| Goose | Block | Swappable alternative harness, open source |
You can change the default harness later and adjust the model per preference. The video's presenter picked Opus but notes that other available models work as well, so the harness and model choices are configuration decisions, not permanent commitments.
How Do Multiple Agents Work in One Channel?
Buzz ships three starter agents, Fizz, Honey, and Bumble, each with an editable personality and description. All three are toggled on by default, shown by a green status indicator, and each has its own direct-message thread.
When you mention several agents in a channel, all of them respond in parallel. In the demonstrated test, a single greeting in the general channel produced three simultaneous replies: Honey introduced itself as a writing and thinking partner, another agent described itself as a researcher, and the third positioned itself as a planner or orchestrator.
You can also stop a running agent, create new agents of your own, and open the Discover Agents view to use agents shared by your team. Agents can be bundled into named teams with their own instructions and descriptions, which is how you scope, for example, a research team separately from a coding team.
Huddles, Memory, and Local Skills
Three features separate Buzz from a plain chat client, and each works in a specific way.
- Huddles. A huddle button at the top of the interface starts a live voice call, similar to a Slack huddle. In the demo, the presenter added Honey to a huddle and spoke to it; the agent answered by voice, and the full transcription of the conversation was captured into the huddle thread afterward.
- Per-agent memory. Every agent has a memory section. When the presenter told Bumble that he likes pizza and asked it to remember, Bumble logged the fact into its core memory, viewable later under the agent's Memories tab as a note about the teammate. Memory is stored per agent, so Honey does not automatically inherit what Bumble knows.
- Local skills. Agents can use skills installed globally on your machine. When asked from the mobile app to list its accessible skills, Honey enumerated skills including planning, code quality, iOS, ship, and media, all pulled from the presenter's local environment. If a skill is installed and exposed through your environment, your Buzz agents can use it.
Projects: Connecting Git Repositories to Agents
The Projects section connects the repositories you are actively working on, so agents can operate on a codebase with full context instead of ad-hoc file references.
In the demo, the presenter asked Bumble to add a local project called Eric OS from the desktop folder. Bumble announced the project, cloned it against the main branch, and the project view then showed the repositories, pull requests, issues, contributions, and related threads in one place.
Agents can act on project structure directly. Asked to create a channel for the project and bring other agents in, Bumble created an Eric OS channel, added Honey and Fizz, and posted an announcement that the channel is now the home for everything related to the project. For a team of developers, product managers, and agents sharing one workspace, each project can get its own channel and its own set of specialized agents.
Human collaboration still works the conventional way. Under settings, an invites section generates a link you can send to teammates, so real people join the same workspace alongside the agents.
Mobile Pairing and Local Machine vs VPS Hosting
Buzz has a mobile view that pairs with your desktop install. In the settings, click Mobile, start pairing, and copy the pairing code shown on the desktop app. Paste the code into the mobile app, confirm the codes match, and the phone connects to the same workspace. From the phone, you can read past conversations and message agents just as you would on desktop, including asking an agent to enumerate its available skills.
The hosting question is the one real architectural decision. Communities live on a remote server, so channels, message histories, and memberships persist regardless of your machine. Agents run locally through your chosen harness, so closing your computer takes every agent offline. The video's recommendation is straightforward: keep agents on your machine for personal use, or host the setup on a VPS so the agents, along with their Claude Code access, stay reachable when your own computer is off.
- Local machine: simplest setup, agents offline when you shut down.
- VPS: agents stay online around the clock, and the server must be allowed to reach your agent harness.
- Mobile app: pairs to whichever of the two you run and mirrors conversations and agent access.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Jack Dorsey Buzz free? Buzz is open source and available in the Buzz repository on GitHub, with no license fee shown during the demonstrated setup. Your real costs are the model usage behind the agent harness, such as Claude Code's Opus model, and any VPS you choose for always-on hosting.
- Do agents keep working when my computer is off? No, not on a local install. Channels and message history live on a remote server, but the agents themselves run on your local machine. Hosting the agent setup on a VPS is the way to keep agents reachable while your computer is closed.
- Can I use something other than Claude Code? Yes. The setup flow lets you swap the agent harness between Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Goose, and you can set a different default later. The model choice is separate from the harness choice.
- What happens if I lose my identity key? You lose access to the account. Buzz uses an identity key instead of a password, so the setup explicitly warns you to copy and save it, since it is the only way to restore or log in to your account.
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