What are messaging channels?

A messaging channel is a personal link between a chat platform you already use — Slack, Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp — and your Claos workspace. Link one and you can message your agents from there instead of opening the web app. The agent replies in the same conversation; the work runs in your workspace.

The mental model

This is the exception to the agent-first pattern. Most of Claos works one way: you come to the workspace to manage agents. Channels invert that — agents meet you in the chat platform you already keep open. The web app is still the home for everything that isn't conversation (settings, tasks, knowledge base, schedules). Channels are a way in, not a replacement.

Two things to remember:

One personal connection per platform. When you connect Slack as a channel, you're linking your identity in Slack to your identity in this workspace. It's not a workspace-wide bridge; teammates link separately.
Channels are not integrations. Sounds confusing because some products appear on both sides — Slack especially. But the two are different surfaces with different settings pages. See Slack as a channel vs Slack as an integration below.

Where you meet them

Settings → Channels. Four cards, one per platform. Each one shows your connection state — Not connected or Connected with the account you linked.

You don't "open" a channel inside Claos — once linked, you use the actual chat platform. The Settings page is just where you wire it up, see the link, and disconnect.

How it works in practice

The flow is one command: type /claos connect in any DM or channel on the supported platform. The bot replies with a sign-in link, you click it, and once the link confirms the platform handle now points to your workspace. From then on, anything you say to the bot (or in a channel where the bot is present) reaches your agents.

Concrete examples of the loop:

Slack. You DM the Claos bot "summarise yesterday's customer mail" — your customer-reply agent picks it up, runs, and replies in the same thread.
Telegram. You forward an article to your Claos bot — your research agent pulls it apart and posts the analysis back.
WhatsApp. You send a voice memo with a quick brief — the agent transcribes, drafts, and replies with the result.
Discord. You ask in a server channel "@Claos, what did the team ship last week" — the agent reads from your workspace and answers in-channel.

What you can't do from a channel: open a knowledge-base page, manage members, change billing, build a new agent. The channel is for conversation; the web app is for everything else.

Slack as a channel vs Slack as an integration

This is the most common source of confusion. They're different features:

Slack as a messaging channel — you chat with your agents from Slack. Lives in Settings → Channels. The link is your personal Slack handle ↔ your Claos workspace.
Slack as an integration — your agents act in Slack on your behalf (post messages, read threads, list channels). Lives in Settings → Integrations. The link is your team's Slack workspace ↔ your Claos workspace.

You can have one without the other. A research agent that posts updates to a Slack channel needs the integration. A workflow where you chat with your agents from Slack needs the channel. Most teams that use both end up connecting both.

Tips and gotchas

Channels are per-user, not per-workspace. Each member who wants to chat from Slack links their own account. Connecting one doesn't connect the team.
The bot needs to be in the room. On Slack and Discord, you can DM the bot directly without any setup — but to invoke it in a channel, the bot has to be invited to that channel first.
Approvals still apply. If an agent tries a sensitive integration action while answering you in a channel, the run will pause for approval. You'll see the held action surface in-chat the same way it does on the web — see Approvals and sensitive actions.
Rich content doesn't survive the trip. Long replies, code blocks, and links work in every platform. File previews, custom buttons, and tables degrade — for those, open the agent's reply on the web.