[johnmatthewtennant]

Why

Plugins need to monitor external work while sharing Attention's existing task lifecycle. Without a source contribution, a plugin must keep its own registrations, execution loop and wake delivery.

What

Add agents.addAttentionSource({ id, run }) for deterministic plugin producers. A source subscription stores its provider and configuration under an Interest. Attention starts and cancels producers, queues their output and delivers to the subscription's optional conversation address. A completed producer or spent timer is removed after its final queued turn succeeds. Failed source deliveries retain their subscription and output. Instructions stay on the Interest; empty output starts no turn.

The separately installed Attention plugin supplies command and GitHub PR producers, configuration forms, its overview and legacy Monitor import. The built-in panel shows the provider and completion state. The host keeps source lifecycle, storage and delivery, plus device-local last-wake timestamps and a bounded source-output tail (40 lines, at most 16 KiB). Older subscriptions without history remain unknown.

Event watches also accept bounded, case-insensitive literal keywords. The external plugin offers one keyword or phrase per line instead of model-filter controls; existing classifier subscriptions retain their settings.

Plugins can obtain an authenticated loopback Buzz MCP connection with agents.connect(pubkey, { signal, channel?, root?, cwd? }), including for an agent running another harness. The app retains the key and uses its existing agent-backed tools. Cancellation, explicit close and plugin unload revoke the endpoint; agent and community lifetime checks reject stale calls. Plugin command execution retains its existing OS privileges.

Validation

In the service integration fixture, the registered producer first emitted whitespace, which started no turn. It then emitted done, and the runner received that output at the saved channel and thread. Resolving the producer preserved its queued delivery, then removed the completed subscription; recreating the service with the same storage did not run the producer or agent again. A held-turn regression verifies output and wake history remain visible until the final turn settles, and a failed-delivery regression verifies its output is retained. Both regressions failed before the change. The fixture uses a mocked harness, relay and native custody.

Two lifecycle regressions failed before their fixes and pass afterward: a rejected producer is not durably marked complete and retries after restart; plugin reactivation waits until the previous producer exits before starting its replacement. Codex and Pi core-memory loading and Goose standalone startup reject cancelled output before a model turn begins.

The external plugin's built artifact was exercised through Buzz's Blob loader for recipe creation, separate listening and delivery destinations, thread-root resolution, keyboard controls and deletion. Its browser fixture uses synthetic persistence.

Keyword regressions reject unrelated content while accepting case variants and literal punctuation. Tool integration preserves and clears the selector. The built external form saves keywords through the host validator and displays their literal matching behavior.

The agent-connection integration fixture runs a consumer plugin distinct from the agent type owner. Its direct handle remains unavailable, while its MCP read reaches native query with the agent pubkey and its memory write reaches native signing as that agent. Transport tests cover close, unload, cancellation during startup and late replies. A pending file-backed memory write is also gated while the connection closes, the plugin unloads, or its caller cancels: all three prevent the native memory write after the file read finishes. Close and unload allowed the write before the fix. These use mocked native custody and transport. A cross-repository fixture then ran the external command producer and a real Node child through Agents.connect, connectMcp, appClient and the MCP dispatcher. The child received its endpoint through environment variables, read as the agent, wrote mem/child-roundtrip as that agent, and emitted its result. An unauthenticated request was rejected, and the endpoint refused connections after the producer finished. This uses a real loopback HTTP listener in place of native transport; native signing/storage remain mocked.

Screenshots

The existing Attention panel displays a plugin-owned source beside an event watch.

Limits

Buffered output and accepted jobs are not durable delivery acknowledgements across app exit. Native platform acceptance and human testing remain outstanding. Source classification and generic provider discovery remain required before readiness. The command-plugin wiring and real child-process fixture are implemented and validated; publication of the external plugin is pending.