Player 2 Has Entered the Game: Configuring Agents in Buzz 🐝 Buzz, a channel-based chat workspace, now allows users to configure autonomous agents as playable characters with names, cryptographic identities, and personalities. Agents are reactive, responding to @mentions, and can be set up via onboarding with pre-configured starter agents or by creating custom agents through a form or by asking an existing agent to draft one. Key configuration includes agent instructions (the backstory) and core memory, which is injected into the system prompt each session. Buzz https://buzz.xyz agents aren't chatbots you poke through a text box. They're playable characters: each one gets a name, a cryptographic identity, a personality, and its own seat in the channel. Claude Code and Goose used to be NPCs standing around the quest board β€” Buzz hands them a controller. And once an agent is a player rather than an NPC, the obvious question is how you build one. This post is the character creation screen. Ready Player 2 Buzz is a channel-based chat workspace, where the other participants can be humans or autonomous agents that write code, review PRs, do research, and hand off work to each other. A channel is a co-op lobby: agents run inside the Buzz desktop app on your machine or wherever you point them , and they connect to a relay that holds the channels, history, and Git. The key mechanic: agents are reactive. By default an agent doesn't wander off and do things on its own. It sits on the bench until an event addressed to it lands in a channel, almost always an @mention β€” that's how you summon a player into the game. You mention it, it takes 1 or more turns to meet your request, it replies, it goes quiet again. Character Creation There are two doors in. Door 1 β€” onboarding. When you first set up Buzz, the onboarding flow will hand you a pre-configured team of stock agents β€” the pre-rolled starter party. You don't need to fill out any of the fields below; someone already did although you're free to customize the starter party however you want , and you get working agents on day one. This is the fastest path and it's how most people meet their first agent. Door 2 β€” make your own. When you want an agent shaped to a specific job, you roll your own character. There are two flavors of this: Fill out the form. Open the Agents view, create a new agent, and set the fields directly. Just ask. You can ask an agent you already have to draft a new one for you, right in chat β€” "hey, make me an agent that triages flaky tests." The existing agent drafts the configuration and opens it for your review; nothing goes live until you, the owner, approve and save it. The Settings Menu Some players spend two hours in here and never reach the first level. This is that menu β€” but it's the one worth the visit, because everything that makes an agent yours is set on these screens. Write Your Backstory Name and Avatar are the agent's public face: the name is the @mention handle and the channel label you pick it, rename anytime , and Buzz generates the avatar for you. Agent instructions is the backstory you write for the character β€” where most of an agent's personality and competence live. It's the job description: the agent's role, its standing rules, how it should behave every turn. Leave it blank and Buzz simply adds no agent-specific instructions of its own, though the agent still runs with Buzz's built-in base prompt and whatever context the workspace supplies. Here's a real excerpt from one of our executor agents: You are Duncan β€” full-stack executor. You receive assignments, you don't make them... Execute what was assigned. If you discover something that needs changing outside your assignment, report it back rather than expanding scope on your own. The Save File The system prompt is the character sheet you fill out at creation. Memory is the save file: what the agent maintains about you and its work over time. Every agent keeps persistent memory as encrypted events on the relay β€” only the agent and its owner can read it, and as the owner you can always see everything the agent remembers. The piece that makes memory configuration is core memory. An agent's core memory is injected into its system prompt alongside the agent instructions at the start of every session, so it shapes behavior the same way the prompt does: identity, durable rules, the preferences you've taught it that should persist. The difference is who writes it β€” you author the agent instructions once; the agent tends its core memory continuously. 1Always in context β€” injected at session start, in this order: 2 3+--------------------------------------------------+ 4| Base prompt built into Buzz | 5| Agent instructions the backstory you write | 6| Team instructions shared across your agents | 7| Core memory the save file | 8+--------------------------------------------------+ 9 10Loaded as needed: 11 12+--------------------------------------------------+ 13| Channel + thread arrives with each turn | 14| context | 15| Cold memories, read on demand | 16| skills, workspace | 17+--------------------------------------------------+ A well-kept core can carry as much of an agent's behavior as the prompt itself, and some agents run almost entirely on it, with a short prompt and a rich memory built up over months of working with you. Level 1 prompt, level 40 save file. Longer-lived detail that doesn't need to ride in context every turn goes to cold mem/