Chat & Responses

Agents can live in your team’s chat. Mention Ryph’s bot in Slack, Discord, Zulip or Telegram, and an agent picks up the request and works on it right there in the thread. Anyone allowed to can mention it again to steer it, and it answers in the same thread.

An agent in chat can do everything it does anywhere else. It reads and changes code, ships pull requests, opens issues, runs checks, publishes artifacts, posts screenshots from its browser, shares previews of your app and uses its tools.

Conversations can also start without anyone asking. A response is an automation that opens a thread in your channel when something happens, such as an alert firing, and puts an agent in it with your team.

Summon an agent

Mention the bot and say what you need:

@ryph why do EU customers see prices in USD since this morning?
@ryph ada look into the flaky checkout test

The first word after the mention can name one of the room’s agents. Otherwise the room’s default agent takes it. Only a real mention counts, as the chat platform marks it, and messages from bots are ignored. On Telegram, a reply to one of the bot’s messages counts as a mention too. On Discord, so does a reply to the bot’s opening line at the top of a channel.

Before anything runs, Ryph works through the mention:

1. May this person ask?

   Ryph checks the sender against the room’s rule, live, on every mention. A sender who isn’t allowed gets no answer at all.

2. Is something already running here?

   If an agent is already working in this thread, the mention joins that run as a new message. Naming a different agent while one is working is refused until the first one finishes.

3. Which repository?

   The channel’s target decides: a repository or a workspace, set per channel, with a default for the rest of the room.

4. Is the channel allowed to see it?

   A public channel can only start work on public repositories, because everything the agent posts there is public too.

5. The run starts

   It runs on behalf of the room’s owner, with the sender recorded as the person who asked. Ryph reacts with 👀 on Slack, Discord and Zulip, and posts an opening line in the thread.

One thread, one run

A run belongs to the conversation it started in: a Slack or Discord thread, a Zulip topic or a Telegram group. Mentions in that conversation reach the run, and the agent answers there.

• It reads the thread. The agent gets the conversation so far as quoted context, up to 200 messages, so “look into this” works.
• It sees your images. Screenshots attached to a mention reach the agent, up to 10 per message.
• It posts as the bot. Every post is signed with the agent’s name. Screenshots from its browser go into the thread as images.
• It stays around. After it answers, the run waits for the next mention. It ends when the agent finishes, when someone ends it from its page in Ryph, or after a quiet stretch: 5 minutes, or 30 once someone has talked to it. Responses wait longer, as below.
• It closes with a summary. Ryph’s closing line says how the run went and links its pull requests, the issues it opened and the run itself.

Topics get renamed and moved on Zulip, and the agent keeps posting wherever its topic is now.

Everything an agent can do

A run from chat is an ordinary run of the agent, with the same tools and limits:

• Code. It works in its own sandbox and ships patches. Patches are approved in Ryph, by whoever the repository’s policy names.
• Issues and reviews. With forge tools on, it can open an issue and post the link in the thread. The issue’s footer says it was asked for by the sender, in chat.
• Checks. It runs the repository’s checks before it ships.
• Artifacts. It can publish a page for a longer answer. A later mention in the same thread updates that page.
• Its tools. Whatever MCP tools its policy allows, such as your telemetry or your issue tracker.

Set up a command room

A chat room becomes a command room once an admin gives it a chat command. In Ryph, go to Triggers, click New trigger, and pick the room under Chat command in. The same flow opens from the room’s menu on the Chat page, under Chat command.

1. Agents

   Tick the agents a mention may name. With more than one, choose the Default agent that takes a mention naming none.

2. Code

   Under Repo or workspace, pick what the room works on by default. Under Channel targets, click Add a channel to give a channel its own. With no default, only the listed channels are served.

3. Access

   Choose who may ask: Members of a user group (on Discord, Everyone with a role), checked live on every mention, or Everyone in the room (private channels only). Telegram rooms have no groups, so there it’s everyone in the group. Set Runs per hour, which counts runs started. Mentions that join a running thread don’t count.

4. Review

   Check it over and click Create chat command.

Runs act for the room’s owner, so they can only reach repositories the owner can.

Responses

A response is an automation whose runs stay open to be talked to. When it fires, Ryph opens a thread in a channel you pick, posts the opening line, and puts the agent in it. Your team steers it by mention, like any chat run.

Responses fit alerts best. Point your alerting at the automation’s webhook, and pick what sends it: Grafana, Prometheus Alertmanager, Grafana IRM, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Sentry, incident.io, Datadog, or a custom format. Ryph reads each alert’s status, its title and which alert it is, and can post the alert itself under the opening line, so the room sees what fired without opening anything.

To set one up, go to Triggers, click New trigger and choose Webhook or schedule:

1. Trigger

   Under Starts when, choose Another service sends a request, then pick your tool under What sends it?. Ryph fills in how requests are verified for you. Something else lets you map a custom payload’s fields.

2. Response

   Choose what a request does. The wording follows the tool you picked. Start a run gives each request a plain run with no conversation. The other options open a conversation, and decide which one a later request joins:

   Option	What happens
   One conversation per alert	Requests about the same alert join its thread. Different alerts get their own.
   One conversation per request	Every request opens a new thread with a new run.
   One shared conversation	While a conversation is open, every request joins it.

   Under Where it talks, pick the Chatroom and Channel, and tick Post the alert in the first message if the room should see what came in. No chatroom, just the run page keeps the conversation in Ryph. When it ends sets how many minutes of quiet the run waits for, before and after someone replies: 30 and 60 by default.

3. Agent and code

   Pick the Agent, and what it Checks out: a repository and branch, or a workspace.

4. Instructions and review

   Tell the agent what to do when something comes in, then click Create automation.

5. Connect your tool

   Ryph shows the URL and values to paste into your tool, step by step. For tools that sign with their own secret, paste it under Paste the signing secret. Ryph waits for the first request and links its run.

A fire that says the alert resolved joins its thread, so the agent can check that its fix held, and starts nothing when no thread is open. An update such as “acknowledged” never starts a run. A response posts into a private channel, since everyone in it can steer the agent and read what it finds. Each response opens a new thread or topic there by default. Tick Post every response in one topic (or thread) to keep them all in one place, such as a daily report’s.

Connect a chat platform

In Ryph, go to Chat, under Integrations in the sidebar, and click Add chatroom. Pick the Platform, give the room a Name, paste what the platform gave you, and click Add.

All four platforms connect outward from Ryph, so none of them need a public URL. That includes Ryph on your laptop.

Bot tokens are sealed in Ryph’s database and never reach a run. If one leaks, replace it on the platform and add the new one as a new room.