docs: formal spec for remote agents and their management (#3748)

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## What

A formal specification for remote agents and their management —
`docs/remote-agents.md` — in the style of
`docs/git-on-object-storage.md`: stated system model, named invariants,
explicit trust boundaries, provider conformance checklist, and an
implementation-correspondence table.

Requested by Tyler in the buzz-remote-agents design thread; co-designed
with Dawn and Wren (review pending).

## Structure

- **System model** — five principals (Desktop / Provider / Substrate /
Agent / Relay) and the design axiom **M1: no management channel** —
everything the desktop knows about a live remote agent flows through the
relay.
- **Five invariants** with enforcement mechanism and stated boundary:
- I1 identity fail-closed, I2 no secrets in configuration, I3
presence-is-status, I4 at-most-one-live-instance, I5 bounded lifetime.
- **Provider protocol** — discovery, `info`/`deploy` wire contract,
untrusted-output rules, the reserved-key rule, and the **deploy state
machine** (Running → no-op).
- **Auto-stop** — `--exit-after-inactivity` /
`BUZZ_ACP_EXIT_AFTER_INACTIVITY`, default off, definition of "inactive",
and why it must not share a name with the three existing timeout
concepts.
- **The Kubernetes binding** — `buzz-backend-kubernetes`:
kubeconfig-only auth, random-default namespace via schema `default`, the
sprig image, pod shape (bare Pod, `terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 60`,
32-hex label / full-pubkey annotation), secrets, GC, config budget.
- **Known defects** at `c1bca1b56` (Windows `.exe` id pollution;
provider env inheritance vs kubeconfig exec plugins).
- **Open decisions A–E** marked inline and consolidated, awaiting owner
ruling.

## Notes for review

Docs-only. Every code claim was verified against the tree
(correspondence table maps each spec concept to its file/function). The
spec deliberately documents two desktop bugs as Known Defects rather
than fixing them here — fixes are follow-up PRs.

---------

Signed-off-by: npub1qyvc0c5kl4gqv2fd97fsk46tu378sqgy35vc83rvgfwne90sel7s0ed67d <011987e296fd5006292d2f930b574be47c7801048d1983c46c425d3c95f0cffd@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz>
Co-authored-by: npub1qyvc0c5kl4gqv2fd97fsk46tu378sqgy35vc83rvgfwne90sel7s0ed67d <011987e296fd5006292d2f930b574be47c7801048d1983c46c425d3c95f0cffd@buzz.block.builderlab.xyz>

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This commit is contained in:

Tyler

2026-08-01 22:51:53 -04:00

committed by GitHub

co-authored by npub1qyvc0c5kl4gqv2fd97fsk46tu378sqgy35vc83rvgfwne90sel7s0ed67d

parent 89bf03c05d

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