Source: Will Pfleger, Block Engineering. Distilled and processed for Signal; not original content.
TL;DR
Buzz is Block’s channel-based workspace where humans and agents share channels, and agents are reactive: they wake only when an event addressed to them lands, usually an @mention. The post walks through every configuration knob, then shows the author’s own five-agent team. The lesson: role differentiation lives almost entirely in three settings, the model, the system prompt and the effort level. Everything else can stay on defaults until something hurts.
Actionable items
- Make agents reactive by default: they act when summoned, take one or more turns, reply, then go quiet. No unprompted wandering.
- Write the agent instructions as a job description with standing rules. Example executor rule: execute what was assigned, and report anything outside the assignment instead of expanding scope.
- Separate what you author from what the agent maintains. Instructions are written once; core memory is tended by the agent, injected every session, and can carry as much behavior as the prompt (“level 1 prompt, level 40 save file”).
- Keep context lean: base prompt, agent instructions, team instructions and core memory are always loaded; channel context, cold memory, skills and workspace files load on demand.
- Match model power to the role: deepest model at highest effort for the orchestrator, a mid-tier model at medium effort for executors, a fast tier for quick tasks.
- Review with a different model family on purpose: an independent second opinion catches more when it is not the same model reviewing its own kind of mistakes.
- Default the trust boundary to “only me”: an agent answers its owner and the owner’s cryptographically verified agents, so a new agent never starts replying to strangers.
- Set shared defaults once (house rules) and let per-agent config override them; keep global AGENTS.md and a skills directory so the same guidance reaches every harness on the machine.
- Two executors can share an identical config and differ only by system prompt: the prompt is the whole difference.
Key quotes
Role differentiation lives almost entirely in model, system prompt, and effort. Tune those three to fit the job and leave the rest of the knobs on their defaults until something actually hurts.
An independent second opinion is more valuable when it isn’t the same model reviewing its own kind of mistakes.
Related
manager-model-routing-beats-single-model · claude-workflows-that-run-unattended · gog-google-workspace-cli