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Spacebot’s messaging system connects your AI agents to multiple communication platforms through native adapters. Each adapter provides full platform integration with real-time message handling, file attachments, rich formatting, and status indicators.

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Supported Platforms

Discord

Discord servers with full support for threads, embeds, buttons, and polls

Slack

Slack workspaces with Block Kit, slash commands, and ephemeral messages

Telegram

Telegram groups and DMs with media attachments and inline keyboards

Twitch

Twitch chat integration with trigger prefixes and user filtering

Email

IMAP/SMTP email with threading support and attachment handling

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Architecture

Each messaging adapter runs independently with its own connection lifecycle:
  • Discord uses Serenity with Gateway events and full cache
  • Slack uses Socket Mode for real-time events without webhooks
  • Telegram uses long polling via the Bot API
  • Twitch connects via IRC with OAuth token refresh
  • Email polls IMAP folders and sends via SMTP
All adapters implement the Messaging trait with consistent APIs for sending messages, handling status updates, streaming responses, and fetching history.

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Features

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Message Types

Every adapter supports:
  • Plain text with automatic length-aware chunking
  • File attachments (images, documents, any mime type)
  • Reactions (emoji reactions on messages)
  • Threading (conversation isolation in threads)
  • Status indicators (typing/thinking indicators while processing)

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Platform-Specific Features

  • Rich embeds with fields, colors, and footers
  • Interactive buttons (primary, secondary, success, danger, link)
  • Select menus with custom options
  • Polls with multiple answers and multiselect
  • Thread creation with automatic fallback to regular messages
  • Message history backfill (up to 100 messages)
  • Block Kit messages with sections, dividers, and actions
  • Slash commands routed to specific agents
  • Ephemeral messages (visible only to triggering user)
  • Scheduled messages via chat.scheduleMessage
  • Streaming responses via message edits
  • User and channel metadata resolution
  • Markdown formatting (bold, italic, code)
  • Inline keyboards with callback buttons
  • File downloads via authenticated URLs
  • Chat action indicators (typing, uploading)
  • Poll creation with quiz mode support
  • Group and private chat filtering
  • Trigger prefix filtering (e.g., !ask)
  • User allowlist for access control
  • Channel-specific agent routing
  • Automatic OAuth token refresh
  • Rate limit handling (20 msg/30s, 100 for mods)
  • Thread detection via References and In-Reply-To headers
  • HTML email rendering with automatic text conversion
  • Multi-folder polling (INBOX, custom folders)
  • Attachment size limits and filtering
  • Sender allowlist with domain wildcards
  • Auto-generated email filtering (no bounce/autoreply processing)

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Message Coalescing

Spacebot includes a message coalescing system that detects rapid-fire message bursts and batches them into a single LLM turn. This prevents the agent from responding to every individual message in a fast-moving channel.
How it works: When messages arrive within a configurable debounce window (default 2 seconds), they’re grouped together. The LLM receives all messages in the batch and can choose to respond to the most interesting one, address multiple points, or stay quiet.
Coalescing is enabled by default on Discord and Slack. DMs bypass coalescing entirely — every DM gets an immediate response.

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Bindings

Bindings connect conversations to agents. Each binding maps a platform conversation to a specific agent ID.
config.toml
[[bindings]]
agent_id = "main"
channel = "discord"
guild_id = "123456789"

[[bindings]]
agent_id = "support"
channel = "slack"
workspace_id = "T01234ABCDE"
channel_ids = ["C0001", "C0002"]

[[bindings]]
agent_id = "notifications"
channel = "email"
You can route different Discord servers, Slack workspaces, Telegram chats, or email addresses to different agents. Each agent maintains separate memory, identity, and conversation history.

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Permissions and Filtering

All adapters support hot-reloadable permission filtering:
  • Guild/Workspace filter — only respond in specific servers or workspaces
  • Channel filter — only respond in specific channels
  • DM allowlist — only accept DMs from specific user IDs
  • User allowlist (Twitch, Email) — restrict who can interact
Permissions reload automatically within seconds when you update the config. No restart needed.
DM filtering defaults to block all on Discord, Slack, and Telegram. You must explicitly add user IDs to dm_allowed_users to enable DMs.

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Streaming Responses

Adapters that support message editing can stream LLM responses word-by-word:
  • Discord — edits a placeholder message with incremental content
  • Slack — edits via chat.update with rate-limit-aware throttling
  • Telegram — edits with 1-second minimum interval to avoid rate limits
Twitch and Email don’t support streaming (IRC and SMTP are send-only protocols).

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Multi-Instance Support

You can run multiple instances of the same platform adapter with different credentials:
config.toml
[messaging.discord]
token = "env:DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN_1"

[[messaging.discord.instances]]
runtime_key = "discord-2"
token = "env:DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN_2"

[[bindings]]
agent_id = "community"
channel = "discord"  # Uses primary instance
guild_id = "111111"

[[bindings]]
agent_id = "internal"
channel = "discord"
adapter = "discord-2"  # Routes to instance by runtime_key
guild_id = "222222"
This is useful for separating public and private bots, or running agents in multiple organizations.

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Next Steps

Discord Setup

Create a bot and connect to your server

Slack Setup

Configure Socket Mode and app tokens

Telegram Setup

Get a bot token from BotFather

Twitch Setup

Set up OAuth and join channels

Email Setup

Configure IMAP polling and SMTP delivery

Configuration Reference

Full messaging config options

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

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