Connect messaging channels

The best interface for an agent is often one people are already in.

Channel adapters route messages from Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, WhatsApp, Signal, or iMessage to a registered AXL agent, and relay the agent's streamed response back into the conversation. The agent itself does not change - the same configuration that answers over HTTP answers in Slack.

The setup pattern

Every adapter follows the same five steps, so learning one teaches you the rest:

1. Create the bot or application with the platform.
2. Configure its credentials as server environment variables.
3. Set the adapter's *_AGENT_KEY to a registered agent.
4. Configure the webhooks or gateway access the platform requires.
5. Send a mention or direct message and check where the reply lands.

Step five is not a formality. An agent that answers in-channel when you expected a thread will feel broken to everyone else in the room.

What the adapters handle

Adapters absorb a set of problems you would otherwise solve per platform: they debounce bursts of messages, deduplicate inbound events that platforms deliver more than once, and throttle streamed updates so a token-by-token response does not turn into a hundred edits.

Attachments flow through AXL's normal file storage, subject to whatever the platform and your server allow.

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