External Channels (Slack and Telegram)
How Vibey connects to external chat platforms so your agents can be talked to from outside the product. Sessions, identity, context, scoping, and streaming.
Two Kinds of Channels
The word "channel" inside Vibey refers to two different things. This page is about external channels: bridges to Slack and Telegram.
| Type | Where it lives | Covered by |
|---|---|---|
| In-Space Channels | Inside a Space, in the Channels view. Humans tag agents in threads. | Space Channels |
| External Channels | Bridges to Slack and Telegram so agents can be reached from outside Vibey | This page |
What External Channels Are
External channels let your agents be reachable on platforms your team and your customers already use:
- Team the Vibey web app itself (full chat with Space context panel)
- Slack workspace integration with DMs, channels, and threads
- Telegram bot integration with private and public modes
- Space Channels in-product chat threads inside a Space (see Space Channels)
Each channel has different capabilities, but the core agent behavior stays the same. Your campaigns, skills, and tools work everywhere.
Sessions
Every conversation creates a session. An independent chat thread with its own message history.
| Interaction | Session behavior |
|---|---|
| DM to the Slack bot | One session per DM channel |
@Vibey mention in a Slack channel | One session per thread. Each mention starts a new thread |
| Follow-up reply in a Slack thread | Continues the same session |
| Telegram private message | One session per Telegram chat |
Telegram /reset command | Archives the current session and starts fresh |
| Team chat | One session per conversation |
Sessions are completely independent. A thread in #marketing and a DM from the same person are two separate conversations with no shared context.
Identity
Vibey recognizes who is talking on each channel:
- Slack workspace members are synced when you install the bot. Vibey knows each person's name, role, and timezone.
- Telegram members are learned on their first message. The Telegram API provides name, username, and language.
- Team you are authenticated as your Vibey account.
The agent uses this identity to address people by name and personalize responses.
Member Notes
On Slack and Telegram, the agent can save notes about the people it talks to. These notes persist across conversations. When someone messages again weeks later, the agent remembers what it learned.
Notes include things like:
- The person's role or area of expertise
- Their preferences ("prefers email over social")
- Recurring topics they work on
This works for both team members in a Slack workspace and external customers using a public Telegram bot. Think of it as a lightweight CRM that builds itself.
For real customer signals tied to identified contacts in your CRM, these notes can flow into the Customer Brain.
Context
What the agent sees depends on the interaction type:
| Interaction | Context the agent receives |
|---|---|
| DM (Slack or Telegram) | The full conversation history within that session |
@Vibey in a Slack channel | The mention text plus the last 10 messages from the channel for surrounding context |
| Reply in a Slack thread | The full thread history |
| Team chat | Full conversation history plus the Space context panel |
Campaign and Agent Scoping
When you connect an agent to Slack or Telegram, it carries its campaign context and org scope from the connection:
- Personal agent connected to Telegram = personal campaigns and credits
- Org agent connected to Slack = org campaigns and credits
- Context toggles (Campaign Context, User Brain, Company Brain, Customer Brain) still apply. If a brain access toggle is off, the agent will not see that context on any channel.
Streaming
- Telegram the agent sends a placeholder message that updates in real-time as content streams in (edited every 1.5 seconds)
- Slack the agent replies in the thread once the full response is ready
- Team real-time streaming character by character