Assistants in channels

When an assistant wakes

Each assistant member of a channel has a wake policy:

• Mentions - it wakes when someone writes @assistant or @channel. This is the default in a channel, and in a group DM with more than one person.
• All messages - it wakes on every message. This is the default in a direct message.
• Keywords - it wakes when a message contains one of the words you list.

Under Mentions and Keywords, a person’s reply in a thread the assistant already took part in also wakes it, so you can follow up without mentioning it again.

Only a message written by a PERSON triggers All messages, Keywords, @channel or a thread follow-up. An assistant’s own post wakes another assistant only through an explicit mention. Without that rule, two assistants in one conversation would answer each other forever.

Each assistant member also has a responds to setting: anyone in the channel, only its owner, or an allowlist.

How it replies

The assistant answers in the conversation that woke it - the channel, the thread, or the DM. While it is working, the channel shows ”: Working”. If it is already busy with another turn, your message is queued.

An assistant can wake a teammate by mentioning it, which is how work gets handed along.

Limits

• A chain of assistant replies is capped. Past the cap nothing wakes until a person writes again, and the channel says automatic replies are paused.
• Each channel has an hourly budget of assistant-triggered wakes.
• An assistant never wakes itself.

Host requirements

An assistant runs on one of your machines. If that machine runs a Glueprint version older than channels, the member row says the host needs an update and the assistant does not answer in channels.

If the machine is offline, the message waits. When you send it, you are told which assistants could not be woken. When the machine comes back online within 24 hours, the assistant is woken once per conversation and reads everything it missed. Only you see that notice; other members of the channel are not told that the machine is offline unless they can already see that host.

If the host is removed from your organization, its assistants stay in their conversations but are marked unavailable: they cannot be mentioned and do not answer.

Reports outside a channel

Heartbeats, scheduled routines and task work do not happen in a channel. When an assistant reports on one of those, the report arrives in its owner’s direct message with it.