channels

A Pi extension that watches email, Signal, GitHub notifications, and mentions in Slack, Chatto, Mattermost, and Zulip, then runs one durable Pi session per Task only when a source detects matching work. Sources may use push connections, local daemons, or lightweight polling. Multiple channels share one durable Task wake queue.

The wake is a trusted, body-free Task reference. Wake prompts contain no message content. For exact items, channel_read returns fetched content inside explicit untrusted-content markers.

Versioning

Channels is alpha software. The v1.x series is an accident of the initial release-please configuration, not a semantic-versioning stability contract. Breaking changes to wake prompts, source behavior, environment variables, and other profile-facing surfaces can land in any release; those changes are recorded in the release notes. Downstream profiles and skills should pin an exact revision and adopt new releases deliberately.

Release-please owns version bumps, so contributors should not edit the version in package.json by hand. When Channels declares stability, this section will instead define the surfaces covered by the version number.

Install

Install it into pi like any other package (pi loads the raw TypeScript via jiti — no build step):

pi install git:github.com/ai-outfitter/channels     # writes ~/.pi/agent/settings.json

Variants:

pi install -l git:github.com/ai-outfitter/channels   # project scope (.pi/settings.json), team-shareable
pi -e git:github.com/ai-outfitter/channels           # load for one run only, no install

Or add it by hand to the packages array in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json:

{ "packages": ["git:github.com/ai-outfitter/channels"] }

Confirm with pi list; update later with pi update --extensions.

Run it resident

A channel watcher starts its connection, daemon, or polling loop with the session and stops it when the session ends, so it needs a long-running session:

• Interactive: just run pi — the connections stay open until you quit.
• Headless: pi --mode rpc for an unattended, programmatically-driven session.

Avoid -p/--print (one-shot, exits immediately). Switching sessions (/new, /resume, /fork, /reload) tears the connections down and reopens them on the new session — that's expected.

Pair each channel with a skill

The extension provides wake transport plus channel_read and channel_respond. It also provides channel_publish for configured adapters. Skills teach the agent when to use them. Responder skills live in this repository (for example dev/slack-responder/SKILL.md) or in a catalog you control — the ai-outfitter/community-profiles catalog does not publish channel responder skills. Enable a matching skill when one is available. Chatto, Mattermost, and Zulip expose the common tools directly, so the agent's profile or instructions must define when to read and respond. The existing JMAP, Signal, and GitHub skills retain their current workflows until their exact-item adapters are implemented.

Choose which channels run

Set OUTFITTER_CHANNELS in your shell before launching pi:

OUTFITTER_CHANNELS	Behavior
unset	Auto-detect — start every channel whose credentials are present.
jmap,signal	Start exactly those channels. Separate names with commas or spaces. Valid names: jmap, signal, github, forgejo, slack, agent, chatto, mattermost, zulip.
agent	Start the native agent session chat channel.
off / none	Disabled.

Auto-detect enables a channel when its required environment variables are present.

Native agent session chat — agent

The agent channel carries agent-to-agent and authorized operator-to-agent chat. It adds agent_list and agent_send for discovery and sending, while incoming messages continue through channel_read and channel_respond. Wakes contain only an opaque agent:v1 locator.

For two agents on the same host, point both at one permission-restricted spool and give each a stable endpoint:

export OUTFITTER_CHANNELS=agent
export AGENT_ENDPOINT_ID=researcher
export AGENT_PRINCIPAL_ID=agent:researcher       # optional; defaults to endpoint
export AGENT_SPOOL_PATH=/var/lib/outfitter/agent-spool
export AGENT_SPOOL_POLL_MS=250                   # optional; minimum 25
pi --mode rpc

Messages are committed atomically before send returns, survive process restarts, and are idempotent when the sender retries with the same message ID.

A scheduled process can send one filesystem message without a running sender session. The command uses AGENT_SPOOL_PATH and the same spool contract:

outfitter-channel-send scheduler resident wake-2026-08-15 "Run the scheduled task."

The four arguments are sender, recipient, message_id, and body. A retry with the same message ID and body returns success. Reuse with different content fails. The recipient reads the message after its resident session starts again.

For remote clients, use the same endpoint/principal variables with:

export AGENT_RELAY_URL=wss://relay.example.com/v1/connect
export AGENT_RELAY_TOKEN=replace-with-revocable-secret

Messages, state transitions, and the relay delivery checkpoint are appended to Pi's native JSONL session as custom entries. The client acknowledges a relay delivery only after both the envelope and checkpoint have been appended. A workspace PVC therefore preserves the canonical conversation state across resident-agent restarts; there is no separate channel transcript or cursor database.

Run the Channels relay

The relay is a separately runnable, single-node HTTPS/WSS service with durable offline queues:

export AGENT_RELAY_HOST=0.0.0.0
export AGENT_RELAY_PORT=8787
export AGENT_RELAY_STORE_PATH=/var/lib/channels/relay-delivery.json
export AGENT_RELAY_CREDENTIALS_PATH=/run/secrets/relay-credentials.json
export AGENT_RELAY_TLS_KEY_PATH=/run/secrets/tls.key
export AGENT_RELAY_TLS_CERT_PATH=/run/secrets/tls.crt
npm run relay

The single-node relay atomically stores only bounded, unacknowledged delivery envelopes. It compacts message bodies immediately after recipient ACK and keeps only bounded, body-free hashes for retry deduplication. Stale unacknowledged envelopes expire after seven days. Transcript queries are correlated and routed to the connected target agent, which answers from its Pi session; the relay never answers them from its delivery store. Runtime limits default to 1,000 connections and 120 client frames per minute; deployments may lower them with AGENT_RELAY_MAX_CONNECTIONS, AGENT_RELAY_MAX_FRAMES_PER_WINDOW, and AGENT_RELAY_RATE_WINDOW_MS.

The credentials document authorizes registration, routes, and discovery:

{
  "credentials": [
    {
      "token": "replace-with-secret",
      "principal": "agent:researcher",
      "register": ["researcher"],
      "send": ["reviewer"],
      "list": ["reviewer"]
    }
  ]
}

send: ["*"] explicitly allows every recipient. Keep credentials in a permission-restricted secret file. The relay requires TLS, except when AGENT_RELAY_ALLOW_INSECURE=1 is explicitly set on a loopback-only development listener. WSS connects at /v1/connect; HTTPS liveness and readiness are /healthz and /readyz.

Set up each channel

pi has no per-extension config file, so each channel is configured with shell environment variables you export before running pi (put them in your shell profile, an .envrc, or a systemd unit for a persistent watcher). Credentials belong to the extension adapter; existing non-tool skills may reuse them.

Email — jmap

Watches a JMAP mailbox's Email state over an EventSource (SSE) and wakes for each exact message newly present in INBOX. The wake carries an opaque task-bound locator. channel_read fetches only that email's subject, addresses, date, and bounded text body, and channel_respond replies to its sender through EmailSubmission/set; neither operation scans the inbox. Each reply carries a deterministic delivery header. After a crash, an exact header lookup reconciles only a non-draft email before any retry. If draft creation succeeded but submission failed, the retry submits that same draft instead of duplicating it.

It also wakes on JMAP CalendarAlert pushes. When a calendar event's alarm fires, the server pushes an alert and the source wakes the agent. Push delivery is at-most-once, and a subscription that fails in a way meaning the CalendarAlert type is unacceptable downgrades that connection attempt to mail-only wakes — see docs/channel-events.md for the full caveats.

• Prerequisites: a JMAP mailbox (e.g. Stalwart, Fastmail). (JMAP servers only — Gmail is not JMAP; use the gmail skill/gam for Google Workspace.) Calendar wakes additionally need a server that speaks JMAP for Calendars. The CalendarAlert frame name and its field casing follow Stalwart's implementation and are not part of RFC 8620; they were captured from a live Stalwart 0.15.5 server, and that exact frame is pinned as a test fixture. A scheduled task is an RRULE calendar event with an alarm. The wake carries the channel plus calendar alert: <uid>, and for a recurring event the occurrence as calendar alert: <uid> (<recurrenceId>) — or a bare calendar alert when the uid fails validation. Nothing else crosses: resolving that uid to the event needs calendar tooling in the agent's profile, which the mail skill (xin) does not provide. Each alert also carries a dedupe key of that uid and, for a recurring event, the occurrence, so distinct alarms stay distinct in the queue while a redelivered one coalesces; past 25 pending alerts for the channel the overflow collapses onto a single unnamed jmap entry rather than evicting other channels.

• Configure:

  export XIN_BASE_URL="https://jmap.example.com"
  export XIN_BASIC_USER="you@example.com"
  export XIN_BASIC_PASS="app-password"
  

Give an agent a real internet address

To put an agent on a deliverable public address without buying it a mailbox, follow the agent mailbox runbook: Google Workspace fronts a dedicated agent subdomain for spam filtering and outbound relay, while the mailboxes themselves stay on a mail server you run.

Signal — signal

Spawns signal-cli … jsonRpc and wakes on each incoming Signal message. The signal-responder skill does the receive/reply.

• Prerequisites: signal-cli installed and a registered or linked Signal account (its data directory), and the signal-responder skill enabled.

• Configure:

  export SIGNAL_NUMBER="+15550100"
  export SIGNAL_CLI_CONFIG="$HOME/.local/share/signal-cli"   # signal-cli data dir
  

GitHub notifications — github

GitHub has no push transport, so this channel polls your notifications and wakes you only when one matches your filters. Pair with gh/a GitHub skill to act on them.

• Prerequisites: a classic PAT with the notifications scope. GET /notifications accepts classic PATs only — a fine-grained PAT and a GitHub App installation token are both rejected, so neither can drive this channel. Keep it separate from whatever the agent's gh uses: GITHUB_NOTIFY_TOKEN is read first, so repository work can hold the narrower credential in GITHUB_TOKEN.

• Configure:

  export GITHUB_NOTIFY_TOKEN="ghp_…"   # classic PAT; falls back to GITHUB_TOKEN
  export GITHUB_NOTIFY_FILTERS="review_requested,assigned_issue,assigned_pr,author"  # optional; this is the default
  export GITHUB_NOTIFY_ORGS="ai-outfitter"  # optional; only wake on these owners
  export GITHUB_NOTIFY_POLL_MS="60000" # optional; a floor — GitHub's X-Poll-Interval may raise it
  export GITHUB_API_URL="https://api.github.com"  # optional; for GHES, or derived from GITHUB_SERVER_URL
  

  Filter	Wakes on
  review_requested	a PR review requested from you
  assigned_issue	an issue assigned to you
  assigned_pr	a PR assigned to you
  author	activity on a thread you opened — this is what tells you a review landed on your own PR
  mention	you were @-mentioned
  comment, subscribed, state_change, ci_activity	as named

  GITHUB_NOTIFY_ORGS is a comma/space list of organization or user logins, matched case-insensitively against the notified repository's owner. Unset, it filters nothing. Set, a notification from any other owner is dropped before acceptance — no Task, no wake, and no mark-read, so the notification stays unread on the account. That last part is the point: GET /notifications is account-wide, so one machine account that belongs to two organizations and runs one agent per organization has both agents woken by every thread. Give each deployment the same token and its own GITHUB_NOTIFY_ORGS, and each one wakes on its own work and leaves the other's alone.

  GITHUB_NOTIFY_MARK_READ is retired. If it is set, Channels ignores it and logs one startup warning. Task-plane intake accepts the exact notification revision durably and then marks that notification read. The woken Task carries the exact repository, subject kind, and number; do not scan assignments or the notification inbox during the turn. See the GitHub acknowledgment migration note.

Slack — slack

Uses Slack's official @slack/socket-mode client to open a Socket Mode websocket and wakes on each app_mention in a watched channel. The event wake carries only an opaque, validated locator. The slack-responder skill passes it to channel_read and channel_respond; the extension owns context retrieval, thread addressing, and the handled reaction.

• Prerequisites: a Slack app with Socket Mode enabled — an app-level token (xapp-…, scope connections:write) for the socket, plus the bot token (xoxb-…, scopes app_mentions:read, channels:history, chat:write, reactions:write) used by the official @slack/web-api client. Add groups:history for private channels. Under Event Subscriptions, subscribe to app_mention, then invite the bot to the channels it should watch.

• Configure:

  export SLACK_APP_TOKEN="xapp-…"                  # Socket Mode (this extension)
  export SLACK_CHANNEL_IDS="joined"                 # default: every channel the bot has joined
  export SLACK_BOT_TOKEN="xoxb-…"                  # context/reply action adapter
  

  Both tokens are required for an operational Slack channel: the app token owns the wake transport and the bot token owns context/reply operations. The source verifies the bot credential with auth.test; message text is fetched only when the agent calls channel_read. Transient authentication or initial connection failures retry without blocking other configured channels. Omit SLACK_CHANNEL_IDS or set it to joined for the default. Set it to one or more channel IDs to narrow the bot below its Slack membership boundary.

Test against a real Slack workspace locally

Socket Mode connects outbound, so local testing needs no public URL or tunnel. Follow the local Slack runbook to configure the app, start the resident bot, and verify a mention-to-reply round trip.

Chatto — chatto

Connects to a self-hosted Chatto server's protocol-v2 realtime projection and wakes for mention notifications. channel_read validates the exact notification and reads up to ten room or thread messages; channel_respond replies in the correct thread and dismisses that notification.

channel_publish posts a new top-level room message. Publication requires an explicit CHATTO_ROOM_IDS entry for the target. The tool records each operation_id before it sends. A retry with the same content returns the first Chatto message ID. Reuse with different content fails. A confirmed provider rejection permits a retry. An ambiguous result stops automatic retry and requires operator reconciliation. Stop the resident session before reconciliation. If Chatto contains the message, record its provider message ID:

export CHANNELS_TASK_STORE_PATH="$HOME/.local/share/outfitter/channels/task-plane"
outfitter-channel-reconcile chatto OPERATION_ID delivered PROVIDER_MESSAGE_ID

If an operator confirms that Chatto did not create the message, mark the operation retryable instead:

outfitter-channel-reconcile chatto OPERATION_ID retryable

Restart the resident session after the command succeeds. Do not mark an operation retryable when the provider result is still unknown.

• Prerequisites: a Chatto identity and bearer token that can read the watched rooms and notifications, post messages and thread replies, and dismiss its own notifications.

• Configure:

  export CHATTO_BASE_URL="https://chatto.example.com"
  export CHATTO_TOKEN="…"
  export CHATTO_ROOM_IDS="room-id-1,room-id-2"  # optional intake; required publish allowlist
  

  Omit CHATTO_ROOM_IDS to accept mentions and replies from every room visible to the identity. Omission disables channel_publish; publication always requires an explicit target entry. This adapter is pinned to the protocol-v2 schema recorded in extensions/vendor/chatto/SCHEMA.md. Chatto v0.4.16 does not expose that schema; use the pinned revision or a later protocol-v2-compatible release described in the local Chatto runbook.

Mattermost — mattermost

Uses Mattermost's WebSocket API for recipient-scoped posted events and its REST API for exact reads, replies, and handled reactions.

• Prerequisites: a Mattermost bot account added to each watched channel, with permission to read channel history, create posts and thread replies, and add reactions.

• Configure:

  export MATTERMOST_BASE_URL="https://mattermost.example.com"
  export MATTERMOST_BOT_TOKEN="…"
  export MATTERMOST_CHANNEL_IDS="channel-id-1,channel-id-2"  # optional
  

  Omit MATTERMOST_CHANNEL_IDS to accept mentions from every channel visible to the bot. See the local Mattermost runbook.

Zulip — zulip

Maintains a Zulip realtime event queue, recreates expired queues, and wakes for channel mentions or direct messages. Reads stay within the original topic or direct conversation; replies preserve that address and add a white_check_mark reaction to the exact message.

• Prerequisites: a Zulip bot subscribed to each watched channel, with access to read messages, send replies, and add reactions.

• Configure:

  export ZULIP_ORGANIZATION_URL="https://zulip.example.com"
  export ZULIP_BOT_EMAIL="bot@zulip.example.com"
  export ZULIP_API_KEY="…"
  export ZULIP_CHANNEL_IDS="12,34"  # optional numeric channel IDs
  

  The allowlist applies only to channel messages; direct messages remain eligible. Omit it to accept mentions from every channel visible to the bot. See the local Zulip runbook.

Minimal end-to-end

pi install git:github.com/ai-outfitter/channels
export GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_…"            # + any other channels' vars
pi                                     # keep this session running

The agent now wakes when a review is requested from you (and any other configured channel), rather than polling.

Using it with Outfitter

If you compose agents with Outfitter (profiles, skills, in-cluster), select this extension in an agent's loadout instead of pi install — see Using channels with Outfitter.

How it works

Connection lifecycle runs on inference-free pi hooks (session_start opens each push stream; session_shutdown closes them). Sources commit work to the task plane; its durable wake queue prompts one durable Pi session per Task, with one active Task authority at a time. Full design, the pi primitives, and verification are in docs/channel-events.md. Source boundaries and the channel tool boundary, library evaluation, and per-channel dynamic-import convention are in docs/architecture.md.

Native agent-to-agent and authorized operator-to-agent chat, including the identity model and boundaries from observation/control/lifecycle, is specified in Agent Session Gateway.

The A2A task plane is specified in docs/a2a-task-plane.md; per-source contracts live in the source conformance matrix.

Add a channel

Add extensions/sources/<name>.ts with a ChannelSource and, for exact-item tools, ChannelActions, then add one entry in the SOURCES registry. Add the source's row to the source conformance matrix.

extensions/
  index.ts            # hooks, required task intake, lazy adapter routing
  channel-tools.ts    # channel_read / channel_respond
  sources/
    types.ts          # source, event, locator, and action contracts
    util.ts           # shared helpers (parseList, scopedLog, reconnect delay)
    jmap.ts           # JMAP EventSource source
    signal.ts         # signal-cli jsonRpc source
    github.ts         # GitHub notifications (polling) source
    slack.ts          # Slack Socket Mode source + action adapter
    chatto.ts         # Chatto realtime source + action adapter
    mattermost.ts     # Mattermost WebSocket source + action adapter
    zulip.ts          # Zulip event-queue source + action adapter
docs/channel-events.md