Channels

A channel is how the outside world reaches your agents. Channels are sibling deployables to agents — they own their own platform, runtime, and routing policy. Agents stay pure computational units; channels declare which agents they dispatch to.

Available channel types

Type	Status	Use case
slack	Stable	Slack Socket Mode bot with self-serve runtime routing
api	Stable	OpenAI-compatible HTTP endpoint (/v1/chat/completions, /v1/responses)
chat	Stable	Browser-friendly chat UI

Common shape

Every channel block has the same skeleton:

channels:
  - name: <unique-name>
    type: slack | api | chat
    platform: <platform-ref>
    secrets:
      - {name: <ENV_VAR_NAME>}
    # type-specific fields below

• name — unique identifier; appears in vystak status, vystak destroy --name, container labels.
• type — picks the channel plugin. New types are pluggable via vystak.channels.register(...).
• platform — same Platform object used by agents; controls where the channel container runs (Docker, Azure Container Apps).
• secrets — environment variables the channel container needs (bot tokens, signing secrets). Resolved from .env or vault depending on the platform.

Type-specific fields are documented per channel:

• Slack channel →

How channels and agents connect

The channel container is a separate process from your agent containers. They talk over the A2A transport — HTTP by default, NATS optionally — using the canonical name on the agent side and an entry in the channel's runtime route table.

┌─────────────────┐   A2A (HTTP/NATS)   ┌─────────────────┐
│  channel        │ ─────────────────►  │  agent          │
│  (slack/api/…)  │                     │  (langchain +   │
│                 │                     │   FastAPI)      │
└─────────────────┘                     └─────────────────┘
        ▲
        │ events from Slack / HTTP / etc.

The channel's agents: field declares which agents it can dispatch to. The exact dispatch logic depends on the channel:

• Slack routes per (team, channel, user) using a runtime SQLite store, populated via slash commands and a bot-invite welcome flow.
• API dispatches to the agent named in the request body's model field (vystak/<agent-name>).
• Chat mirrors the API channel with a UI.

Lifecycle

vystak apply           # build + run the channel container alongside agents
vystak status          # health + binding info
vystak destroy         # stop and remove the channel container
                       # state volumes (e.g. Slack /data) preserved by default

For Slack, vystak destroy --delete-channel-data also removes the runtime bindings/preferences SQLite volume.