Channels

Channels are where work gets done by a team. You post a request the way you would in a team chat; the lead agent takes it, the team carries out the playbook, and the result comes back in the same timeline.

Anatomy of a channel

• Name and purpose. The purpose is one line: "Turn inquiries into priced quote documents".
• Playbook. How the team collaborates, in plain language. Once the channel is open you can compile the playbook into numbered steps; those steps are what runs when a task starts.
• Team. The agents in the channel, in display order.
• Lead. The agent that receives requests, hands out work and replies.

Under the hood a channel is an automation: the playbook is its plan and the channel's tasks are its runs. That is why a task started in a channel also shows on the Activity page and can be reached from outside the app. See How automations work.

Kinds of channel

Creating a channel

Press New channel on the Channels page. Name it, write the purpose and the playbook, add agents to the team and pick the lead. You can start with a rough playbook and refine it in Settings later.

Posting

The composer at the bottom takes text and up to five attachments. ⌘+Enter sends. cmdk decides whether your post is a message or a task:

• A question or a remark gets a conversational reply from the lead.
• A request for work starts a task. An attachment always starts a task.

Posts made while a task runs are marked Queued and handled when the task finishes.

Reading the timeline

A running task writes to the timeline as it goes: the lead taking it, one status line per step ("Pricing is looking up 3 products"), handoffs between agents, errors, and finally a deliverable post with any files. The header shows the channel's state: Working, Needs input or Idle, and how many posts are queued. A floating button appears when new activity arrives while you are scrolled up.

When the team needs you

If a step needs something only you can give, the task parks and the channel shows Needs your input with the question. Answer in the card or in the composer, and the task continues. The Open the task link shows the full run. See Tasks and activity.

The side panel

The panel next to the timeline shows the team roster with each member's state, the task list with Show this task and Delete this task, the Files produced in this channel, and the selected agent's instructions.

Settings

Open Settings from the channel header. Two tabs:

• Settings: rename, switch between Active and Archived, change the lead, edit the purpose and the playbook, compile the playbook into a plan, and manage the team. Under Danger, archive the channel; its tasks stay in the automation history. Archived channels cannot be restored yet.
• Plan: the compiled steps, the same view as an automation's Steps tab.