Skip to content

reference-channels.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
73 lines (49 loc) · 2.64 KB

reference-channels.md

File metadata and controls

73 lines (49 loc) · 2.64 KB
Raw

Reference — Channels

Channels are the I/O surface the agent uses to talk to the outside world. Adapters live in channels/; MeTTa-side dispatch lives in src/channels.metta.

The adapter contract

Each adapter exposes:

Function Purpose
start_<name>(...) Called once from initChannels. Opens sockets / spawns listener threads as needed.
getLastMessage() Returns the next unread inbound message as a string. Returns "" if none.
send_message(str) Posts an outbound message.

The MeTTa side reads commchannel and branches:

(= (receive)
   (if (== (commchannel) irc)
       (py-call (irc.getLastMessage))
       (if (== (commchannel) telegram)
           (py-call (telegram.getLastMessage))
           (if (== (commchannel) slack)
               (py-call (slack.getLastMessage))
               (py-call (mattermost.getLastMessage))))))

channels/irc.py

IRC adapter with simple one-time-secret authentication.

  • start_irc(channel, server, port, user) — connect and join.
  • Inbound traffic is filtered to the first user who types auth <one-time-secret>. All other speakers are ignored.
  • Uses QuakeNet (irc.quakenet.org) by default.

channels/mattermost.py

Mattermost adapter using a bot token.

  • start_mattermost(url, channel_id) — connect to a Mattermost instance.
  • Requires MM_BOT_TOKEN environment variable.

channels/telegram.py

Telegram adapter using Bot API long polling.

  • start_telegram(chat_id, poll_timeout) — starts a poll loop.
  • TG_CHAT_ID is optional; if empty, the adapter can auto-bind to the first valid inbound chat.
  • Outbound messages are chunked to Telegram-safe lengths.

channels/slack.py

Slack adapter using Slack Web API polling.

  • start_slack(channel_id, poll_interval) — starts a poll loop.
  • SL_CHANNEL_ID is optional.
  • The bot user must already be invited to the target channel.
  • If SL_CHANNEL_ID is empty, the adapter auto-binds to the first channel where auth succeeds.
  • Adapter respects Slack Retry-After backoff on HTTP 429 and enforces a minimum 60s poll interval.
  • Uses the same one-time auth <secret> ownership gate as the other adapters.

channels/websearch.py

Not a communication channel in the send/receive sense — this is the backend for the search skill. Exposes search(query).

Adding a new channel

See tutorial-04-adding-a-channel.md.

Related reference