Buzz Integration in Hermes Agent: Desktop, Relay Bridge, and Native Gateway

This page covers the Buzz integration for Hermes Agent, the AI agent runtime from Nous Research. Buzz is Block's open-source, self-hostable workspace where humans and AI agents share the same channels, built on Nostr. Once wired up, an agent can join Buzz channels, respond to mentions, handle DMs, post threaded replies, react to messages, process images, and deliver cron results, all while using Hermes' own memory, skills, approvals, and session management.

What It Does

The Buzz integration gives Hermes Agent three distinct modes of operation, each with a different set of capabilities:

• Desktop runtime (Buzz Desktop managed harness): Buzz Desktop spawns Hermes locally. Hermes runs on your desktop, launched by Buzz. Best for trying Hermes inside Buzz Desktop with zero configuration. Inbound and outbound use ACP stdio. Setup is automatic discovery.
• Relay bridge (buzz-acp + ACP): Buzz's buzz-acp bridges a channel to hermes acp over stdio. Hermes runs on a server, launched by buzz-acp. Best for a hosted agent identity when Buzz owns the transport. Inbound is ACP stdio (via relay WebSocket). Setup uses buzz-acp environment variables.
• Native gateway platform (recommended for full Hermes): Hermes' gateway joins Buzz as a first-class messaging platform, alongside Telegram, Discord, and others. Hermes runs in your own gateway. Best for full Hermes: memory, skills, approvals, cron, sessions. Inbound arrives over a persistent NIP-42-authenticated Nostr WebSocket with automatic fallback to CLI polling. Outbound goes through the buzz CLI. Setup uses hermes gateway setup and then picking Buzz.

All three modes share the same underlying Nostr infrastructure: every message is a signed event on a relay you own, and every participant (human or agent) is a keypair. The integration was built with community contributions from @SHL0MS (PATH launcher and Desktop security audit), @NYTEMODEONLY (relay-bridge docs), @rob-coco (platform adapter), @ScaleLeanChris (Nostr WebSocket transport, NIP-42 and BIP-340 signing), and @jethac (multi-agent verification).

Setup

There are three setup paths depending on which mode you choose.

① Buzz Desktop Managed Runtime

Buzz Desktop ships Hermes as a preset runtime. With Hermes installed the normal way, open Settings then Runtimes and Hermes appears automatically. Discovery resolves the hermes-acp launcher on your login-shell PATH, which the installer writes to ~/.local/bin. On older installs, hermes update self-heals the launcher path.

Full setup, troubleshooting, and the security posture (Buzz auto-approves tool permissions, so keep agents owner-only) are documented in the ACP Host Integration page for Buzz Desktop.

② Relay Bridge (buzz-acp + ACP)

For a hosted Hermes identity that joins Buzz channels while Buzz's own harness owns the transport, the architecture is:

Buzz relay -> buzz-acp -> Hermes Agent

The spawned Hermes uses the same config, credentials, memory, and skills as hermes on that host. Key minting, channel discovery, owner-only telemetry (set via BUZZ_ACP_RELAY_OBSERVER), and headless-permission guidance are covered in the ACP Host Integration page for Buzz channels (relay bridge).

③ Native Gateway Platform (Recommended for Full Hermes)

The bundled buzz platform plugin makes Buzz a normal Hermes messaging platform. Channels, DMs, mention gating, threaded replies, reactions, images, and cron delivery (with deliver=buzz) all work. Hermes' own approvals, memory, and session management remain intact.

To set it up, run:

hermes gateway setup # pick Buzz

Inbound arrives over a persistent NIP-42-authenticated Nostr WebSocket (dependency-free BIP-340 signing) with automatic fallback to CLI polling. Outbound goes through the buzz CLI.

Full configuration reference (environment variables, config.yaml, transport modes, access control) is in the Messaging page for Buzz.