Setup
- Machine A ("host", always on): runs Buzz Desktop and manages/hosts all agents.
- Machine B (chat client): same user, same relay, no locally managed agents.
- All agents are
role=bot channel members on the relay. Desktop v0.5.4.
What happens
Mentioning an agent from machine B never starts it on machine A. Only agents that are already running on A (e.g. via start-on-app-launch) respond; a managed-but-stopped agent stays silent with no error anywhere.
Why (as far as I can tell from the source)
Waking an agent on mention is implemented sender-side only: desktop/src/features/messages/ui/useMentionSendFlow.ts resolves mentioned pubkeys against the sender's managed-agents list and calls the start mutation for those. I could not find any host-side path (in desktop/src-tauri/src/managed_agents/ or the crates) that starts a stopped managed agent when a mention for it arrives from the relay. So in any split topology — the same one as #3609 — mentions from other machines only reach agents that happen to be warm.
This also bites subtly on a single machine: an agent with start-on-launch disabled answers when mentioned locally (sender-side start kicks in), which makes the multi-machine silence look random.
Workaround
Enable start-on-app-launch for every agent on the hosting machine.
Suggestion
Have the hosting app subscribe to mentions of its own managed agents and start them on demand — that makes wake behavior symmetric with local sends. If that's out of scope, documenting start-on-launch as required for multi-machine setups would already help.
Related: #3609 (mention picker filtered to locally-hosted agents — same split-hosting topology).
Setup
role=botchannel members on the relay. Desktop v0.5.4.What happens
Mentioning an agent from machine B never starts it on machine A. Only agents that are already running on A (e.g. via start-on-app-launch) respond; a managed-but-stopped agent stays silent with no error anywhere.
Why (as far as I can tell from the source)
Waking an agent on mention is implemented sender-side only:
desktop/src/features/messages/ui/useMentionSendFlow.tsresolves mentioned pubkeys against the sender's managed-agents list and calls the start mutation for those. I could not find any host-side path (indesktop/src-tauri/src/managed_agents/or the crates) that starts a stopped managed agent when a mention for it arrives from the relay. So in any split topology — the same one as #3609 — mentions from other machines only reach agents that happen to be warm.This also bites subtly on a single machine: an agent with start-on-launch disabled answers when mentioned locally (sender-side start kicks in), which makes the multi-machine silence look random.
Workaround
Enable start-on-app-launch for every agent on the hosting machine.
Suggestion
Have the hosting app subscribe to mentions of its own managed agents and start them on demand — that makes wake behavior symmetric with local sends. If that's out of scope, documenting start-on-launch as required for multi-machine setups would already help.
Related: #3609 (mention picker filtered to locally-hosted agents — same split-hosting topology).