I have a plan for this month. While waiting for telehash, I am going to
build [[design/git-remote-daemon]], which is the infrastructure git-annex
will need, to use telehash. Since it's generalized to support other protocols,
I'll be able to start using it before telehash is ready.

In fact, I plan to first make it work with ssh:// remotes, where
it will talk with git-annex-shell on the remote server. This will let the
assistant immediately know when the server has received a commit, and that
will simplify using the assistant with a ssh server -- no more need for
XMPP in this case! It should also work with git-remote-gcrypt encrypted
repositories, so also covers the case of an untrusted ssh server where
everything is end-to-end encrypted.

Building the git-annex-shell part of this should be pretty easy, and
building enough of the [[design/git-remote-daemon]] design to support it
also not hard.