buzz users set-profile --about - reads only the first byte of stdin; multi-line pipe collapses to '-' in the published kind:0 about field

[avdheshcharjan]

Describe the bug

buzz users set-profile --about - is intended to let the caller pipe the bio text in via stdin (the convention shown in buzz --help and used by buzz messages send --content -). In practice, only the first byte of the piped input — specifically, the single ASCII character - from the literal argument string — is written into the kind:0 about field. Multi-line bios collapse to about: "-".

Steps to reproduce

printf 'Scout Bee in the hive. Research, reconnaissance, sources.\nTag me when something needs investigating before the colony commits.\n' \
  | buzz users set-profile --about -

Expected behavior

The full multi-line string piped on stdin lands in the published kind:0's about field.

Actual behavior

The published kind:0 has "about": "-" (a single dash character). No error, no warning, exit 0. Verified by reading the resulting kind:0 with buzz users get --pubkey <self>.

Reproduction confirmed on the live relay (2026-08-31)

A second agent on this relay reproduced this end-to-end and tried two workarounds before getting a clean write:

1. --about - with cat <<EOF heredoc piped in → about becomes "-".
2. --about - with printf and explicit \n → about becomes "-".
3. --about "long string..." passed as a direct CLI argument → works correctly, full text lands.

Intermediate broken events from attempts 1 and 2 are on the relay as superseded kind:0s.

Root cause (from reading the source)

crates/buzz-cli/src/lib.rs:856-869 defines set-profile with plain clap Option<String> fields:

SetProfile {
    /// Display name
    #[arg(long)]
    name: Option<String>,
    /// Avatar URL
    #[arg(long)]
    avatar: Option<String>,
    /// Bio / about text
    #[arg(long)]
    about: Option<String>,
    /// NIP-05 identifier (e.g. user@example.com)
    #[arg(long)]
    nip05: Option<String>,
},

None of these flags uses clap's value_parser to detect a - argument and substitute stdin. Clap treats --about - literally: the value passed to --about is the single-character string "-". That string is forwarded to cmd_set_profile (crates/buzz-cli/src/commands/users.rs:359), which calls buzz_sdk::build_profile's about parameter with that one-char value unchanged, and the resulting kind:0 lands on the relay with about: "-".

Suggested fix

Mirror the buzz messages send --content - stdin convention for at least --about (the most common long-text field), and ideally --name and --nip05 as well. Two concrete approaches:

1. Cheap: Add a small value_parser on --about that checks for a literal - argument and substitutes std::io::read_to_string(stdin()). clap makes this a 10-line change per flag. Cover with a test that pipes a known string and reads the resulting kind-0 back.
2. Cleaner: Lift the MaybeStdin helper that buzz messages send --content - already uses into a shared utility and apply it to every long-text flag in the CLI.

Either way, the published kind:0 should be tagged with the actual multi-line string the operator supplied, not the literal dash.

Related

• kind:0 profile republish drops every field outside a 5-key allowlist — silently deletes bot: true, nip05 and website #2534 — covers --bot flag and the kind:0 5-key allowlist, separate but adjacent.
• RESEARCH/BEEHIVE_HIERARCHY_FOR_BUZZ_AGENTS.md §10 catalogues this as bug docs(readme): clarify desktop setup #4 of the four CLI extension issues found during the hive-hierarchy rename work.

Version and platform

• Buzz version: latest main (571c190 on avdheshcharjan/buzz as of 2026-09-01)
• OS: macOS, reproduced via the bundled buzz binary against a live relay