Channels
Channels connect your agents to the messaging apps you already use. Connect one and you can talk to your agents from outside Cohort, and they can reach you back there. To talk to an agent inside Cohort, use Chat.
Connect channels in Settings → Channels. Workspace owners and admins can connect and disconnect them. After a channel is connected, you can choose which agent answers on it; new connections go to your default agent.
Available channels
| Channel | Notes |
|---|---|
| iMessage | Recommended. Text your default agent on a dedicated iMessage line. Nothing to install. |
| Slack | Bring your own Slack app. Cohort gives you the manifest and you paste the tokens. |
| Telegram | Connect your own Telegram bot in about two minutes. |
| Discord | Bring your own Discord bot and invite it to a server you own. |
| Signal | Register a dedicated Signal number and authorize your own number to message it. |
Who your agent is talking with
In a direct message, your agent is told who is on the other end.
- The person who connected the channel is recognized. When they message the agent from the number or account they connected, the agent is told their name and their workspace role.
- Owners and admins get everything the agent can do.
- Members get ordinary work. From a member’s direct message the agent still handles tasks, projects, comments, the Wire, sites, web search and messaging. It won’t do things reserved for owners and admins: read the bank feed, create or change routines and other schedules, change its own skills, standing instructions or connections, or reach saved credentials. It also won’t run code or control a browser. It says an owner or admin has to ask.
- Anyone else is unchanged. A person who can message the channel but didn’t connect it isn’t linked to a workspace member. The agent is told so, and works with them as it did before.
- Group conversations are unchanged.
Cohort works this out from the channel connection, not from anything written in the conversation, so nobody can claim a role by saying so.
How the first conversation works
An agent’s first-conversation welcome belongs to the relationship between a workspace, a person, and an agent, not to any one channel.
- The first direct conversation counts, wherever it starts. In a supported one-to-one channel, the agent can introduce itself, respond to what you actually wrote, and help you get acquainted.
- Additional channels continue the relationship. Connect the same person and agent somewhere else and Cohort doesn’t replay the introduction just because the transport changed.
- Each agent is a new relationship. A different agent in the same workspace can still introduce itself the first time you talk directly.
- Group conversations skip the welcome. Where groups are supported, the agent can participate normally without starting a personal onboarding exchange in front of everyone.
Memory across channels. Memory isn’t kept per channel. What’s said in a conversation is remembered for that conversation’s audience, the same way on every channel: see Who hears what. You can also decline the getting-to-know-you conversation and move straight to a task.