block / block/buzz

Mentioning an agent from another machine never wakes it — agent start on mention is sender-side only

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Rust
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Description

### 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).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with desktop/src/features/messages/ui/useMentionSendFlow.ts to trace the existing sender-side wake path, then inspect desktop/src-tauri/src/managed_agents/ and the related crates for host-side mention handling. Reproduce the split-host setup described in the issue and trace relay-delivered mentions. Done means a stopped managed agent on the hosting machine wakes when mentioned from another machine, or the required limitation is documented.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust, typescript
Domain
desktop, distributed-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
52/100

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