2.7 Chat channels
A chat channel lets you talk to an agent on this machine from Telegram or WeChat: the same conversation as on the Chat page, arriving from a phone. Chat channels is under Chat in the sidebar, and only an administrator sees it.
A channel polls out from this machine to the platform, so it needs no public address. A laptop behind a home router or an office firewall is fine.
Adding a channel
Add channel opens the form:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Name | What the channel is called here. It cannot be changed afterwards |
| Platform | Telegram or WeChat. It cannot be changed afterwards |
| Bot token | Telegram only: the token @BotFather gave you. When editing, leave it empty to keep the stored one |
| WeChat sign-in | WeChat only: see below |
| Agent | Which agent a new conversation talks to. The same agents as on Chat can be picked |
| Working directory | Where that agent works. Empty is the home directory |
| Allowed users | Who may drive the agent — see below |
| Listening | Whether Gateway listens on this channel at all |
The row on the page says whether a channel is Listening, Not listening, Off, or what the platform answered when it refused.
Signing WeChat in
WeChat has no token to paste. Give the channel a name, then press Show the code: Gateway saves the channel, asks WeChat for a sign-in code and draws it. Scan it with the WeChat account that will carry the bot, and the page says Signed in once WeChat confirms. The credential is written straight into the channel and never passes through the browser.
This is WeChat's own bot interface for personal accounts, not a third-party protocol. It carries one-to-one chats only.
Who may drive the agent
Allowed users is a list of the platform's own user IDs: the numeric user ID on Telegram, and the ID WeChat's bot interface gives the sender on WeChat. A message from anybody else is ignored without a reply.
An empty list lets anybody who finds the bot drive the agent on your machine, with the agent's access to your files. Leave it empty only while you are trying a bot nobody else knows about.
Talking to it
Each chat has its own conversation, opened by its first message with the channel's agent and working directory. It carries on until you start another.
Commands start with /:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/new | Start a fresh conversation |
/status | Which agent, which directory, how many turns, and the last error |
/agents | The agents on this machine that can be driven |
/agent <id> | Talk to a different agent, from the next message |
/dir <path> | Work in a different directory, from the next message |
/model <name> | Pick a model; empty goes back to the agent's own |
/stop | Stop what the agent is doing now |
/help | This list |
Changing the agent, the directory or the model ends the conversation and opens another: an agent is told its working directory when it starts, and carrying a half-finished conversation into a different project would mislead it.
One message is answered at a time. A second one sent while the agent is still working is refused with a note that /stop ends the first.
How answers arrive
| Telegram | ||
|---|---|---|
| While the agent works | The answer grows in place, rewritten every couple of seconds | "Typing…" is shown; nothing is sent until the answer is finished |
| Formatting | Markdown is rendered — bold, code, links, lists | Plain text, since WeChat shows no Markdown |
| A long answer | Split into messages of up to 4,096 characters | Split into messages of up to 2,000 characters |
Every channel conversation is also listed on the Chat page, where it can be watched with its tool calls while it runs.
Next: 3.1 Providers.
2.6 Chat
Chat hands a message to an agent on this machine and shows it working: the answer as it is written, every tool it reached for, and what the turn cost.
3.1 Providers
A provider is one model endpoint Gateway can send an agent's requests to: a vendor, a reseller, or something running on this machine. Providers is the list of them.