Channels overview

A channel lets you talk to your agents from an app you already use, and lets other people reach them too. You connect channels in Settings › Channels. Each one then shows up in the sidebar under Channels, with its contacts and chats.

Settings, Channels section: a connected Telegram bot with its status, who answers, and how it behaves — Settings › Channels

Three words: channel, contact, room

A channel is an app APX talks through: Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, iMessage.
A contact is a person on a channel. Each contact has a direct chat with your agent.
A room is a shared place many people read, such as a channel on your Discord server.

Every contact chat and every room is kept as an APX conversation, so you can read it, search it and step in from the panel. Agents use the same words: they can list channels and contacts, write to a contact, read a room and post in one by its exact name.

Where your messages land

When you write to your agent on a channel, your message goes into Home by default: one conversation with your secretary, whether you write from the panel, the terminal, Telegram or WhatsApp. Pick up on your phone what you started at your desk.

If you’d rather keep a channel apart, set Your messages to Own chat in that channel’s settings. Your messages from there then get a chat of their own.

Who gets an answer

APX answers you, and the people you approve. Everyone else is a stranger, and you choose what happens when one writes (Strangers in the channel’s settings):

Option	What happens
Send a code	They get a pairing code. Nobody answers them until you approve it, from the channel’s settings or from your notice.
Ask me	You get a notice with who wrote and what they said. Say yes (the notice’s button, or tell your agent) and their message is answered.
Answer	They’re answered right away as a new contact, in a sealed chat with an hourly limit.
Ignore	Nobody answers them and they aren’t listed.

You can also approve from the terminal, or just tell your agent (“let her in”). The agent asks for your OK before it lets anyone in.

❯ apx pairing
482913  telegram  Ana: Hi, is this the store?

apx pairing ok 482913 "Ana"    # approve as a contact
apx pairing no 482913          # drop the request
apx pairing me 482913          # this address is mine (yours, the owner's)

Contacts are sealed

An approved person is a contact, with a role: you (owner), contact, or blocked. A contact’s chat is sealed: the agent answers them with no tools and none of your memory, so a stranger’s message can’t make it act for you.

Open a contact from the channel’s screen to set:

Who they are, in your words. It reaches only the turns that answer this person.
Rules, which go last in the prompt and win over the agent’s caution.
What this conversation may do: Take appointment requests, Take requests (each becomes a task for you) and Answer from my notes (your general notes, read only). All off by default.
Silence: their messages are kept but never reach a model.

Search the web

A channel’s Search the web setting opens one thing, and only that, in its sealed chats (a server room, a contact’s chat): searching the web and reading public pages (web_search, web_read). Never your computer, the shell, files, the browser, your memory or your projects.

Only you (the default): when you ask in a room (“Roby, look at the open issues on our repo”), or from the app in a contact’s chat.
Everyone: anyone it answers there can have it look something up.
Off: it only talks.

In a contact’s chat in the panel, Who answers switches between the agent (you tell it what to answer) and I’ll write (your words go out as you typed them).

apx contacts                 # people and their addresses
apx contacts add Ana Pérez   # add one by hand (link addresses with pairing)
apx contacts block <id>      # or unblock, rm

While the agent is working

While it is working decides what happens if you send another message before the answer is done:

Slip in (the default): your message joins the running turn; the agent reads it between steps and keeps going. This works on APX’s own engine; other engines wait.
Wait: your new message waits, and is answered when the current one finishes.
Interrupt: it stops what it was doing and starts over with your new message.

Whatever the setting, a short “stop” (“stop”, “pará”, “basta”, “cancelá”) while it works stops the turn: you get “Done, I stopped.” and nothing else.

On Telegram and WhatsApp, Messages that need no answer chooses what an “ok”, a thanks or a goodbye gets: Silence or React (an emoji), with no model call either way.

Delivery and notices

Everything APX sends goes through a durable outbox: a message survives a restart and is retried, and each one ends as sent, maybe sent or failed. The channel’s settings list what was Recently sent; the terminal shows more:

❯ apx channels outbox
10-08T09:14  sent      telegram  reply   Your order shipped this morning…
10-08T09:02  sent      telegram  notice  Morning brief: 3 tasks due today…

Under Notices for you, Confirmations follow you sends a question an agent asked in the app to your channel if nobody answered it (after 1, 2 or 10 minutes, or never), with buttons. Quiet hours and the daily cap live in Settings › Interruptions.

Voice notes

Voice notes you send on Telegram or WhatsApp are transcribed and answered as text. Transcription uses the engines in Settings › Voices (local whisper.cpp included). Ask the agent to answer you with voice and it turns spoken answers on for that chat; that needs a voice in Settings › Voices too.

Which channels work today

Channel	State	How it connects
Telegram	Complete	A bot you create with BotFather
WhatsApp	Complete	A linked device, by QR
Discord	Complete	A bot: direct messages and server rooms
Slack	Complete	An app in Socket Mode: direct messages
iMessage	Tools on a Mac	Agents read and send; no incoming chats
Matrix, Mattermost, Signal	Unverified	In the panel, not yet tested against a real server
Teams, Google Chat, Email, SMS, LINE	Coming soon	Listed, can’t be connected yet

❯ apx channels
telegram       telegram  running   @acme_store_bot    agent nova
whatsapp       whatsapp  running   +1 555 0100        agent nova

TelegramThe quickest to set up.

WhatsAppA line of its own, or your own number.

Discord and SlackBots in DMs, and Discord rooms.

AutonomyWhat agents may do without asking.