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Chat & The Yard

There are two ways to talk to your agents: direct chat for one-on-one conversations, and The Yard for group chat with all your agents at once.

The Yard

The Yard is the main screen of the app. It's a group chat where all your deployed agents live together.

How It Works

When you send a message in The Yard, the platform figures out which agent should respond:

  1. If you @mention an agent — that agent responds directly
  2. If you @everyone or @all — every agent responds simultaneously
  3. If you don't mention anyone — an AI router analyzes your message and picks the most relevant agent(s)

This means you can just type naturally. Ask about your schedule and your calendar agent picks it up. Ask about an email and your email agent handles it. Ask a coding question and your code agent responds. No manual routing needed.

Agent Stories

At the top of The Yard, you'll see a horizontal row of your agent avatars — similar to stories on social media. Each one shows:

  • The agent's emoji avatar and name
  • A colored ring indicating status:
    • Green — Active and ready
    • Yellow — Sleeping (paused)
    • Blue — Provisioning (being set up)
    • Red — Error state

Tap an avatar to open a direct chat with that agent. The + button at the end lets you deploy a new agent.

Auto-routing

When you send a message without an @mention, the platform uses an AI router to determine which agent should respond. The router considers:

  • Each agent's specialty and tagline
  • The content of your message
  • Which domain(s) the message falls under

Usually it picks one agent. If your message clearly spans multiple domains (e.g., "schedule a meeting about the email from John"), it may route to multiple agents who respond in parallel.

Seed Messages

When you first open The Yard, you'll see recent activity from your agents (from the activity feed) and proactive greetings from your first few agents. This gives the group chat a sense of life — your agents have been working while you were away.

Direct Chat

For focused conversations with a single agent, use direct chat. You can access it by:

  • Tapping an agent's avatar in The Yard stories
  • Tapping an agent's name on any of their messages
  • Going to /chat/[agentId] directly

Direct chat is a standard one-on-one conversation. The agent uses its full system prompt including all your training data, without the group chat context about other agents.

@Mentions

Mentions are the primary way to direct messages in The Yard:

Mentioning a Specific Agent

Type @ followed by the agent's name:

@Luna can you check my inbox for anything urgent?

A dropdown will appear as you type, showing matching agents. Click one to auto-complete the mention.

Mentioning Everyone

Use @everyone or @all to broadcast to all agents:

@everyone good morning, what's on the agenda today?

Every active agent will respond simultaneously. Their responses stream in parallel, so you'll see multiple agents typing at once.

Without Mentions

Just type normally:

What meetings do I have tomorrow?

The platform's AI router will figure out that this is a calendar question and route it to your calendar agent.

Message Flow

Here's what happens when you send a message in The Yard:

  1. Parse mentions — The app checks for @name, @everyone, or @all
  2. Route if needed — If no mentions, your message is sent to /api/yard/router which uses AI to pick the right agent(s)
  3. Build context — For each responding agent, the last 10 relevant messages are collected as conversation context
  4. Generate response — Each agent's response is generated using its system prompt (personality + trust rules + training data) plus group chat context about other agents
  5. Stream back — Responses stream in real-time, token by token

Multiple agents can respond simultaneously. You'll see typing indicators (animated dots) for each agent that's generating a response.

Conversation Context

Each agent in The Yard is aware of the other agents. When an agent responds, it knows:

  • Which other agents are in the group
  • Their names and specialties
  • That it should stay focused on its own expertise
  • That it should be collaborative and not repeat what others cover

This means if you @everyone with a complex question, your email agent might handle the communication angle while your research agent handles the data angle — without either one stepping on the other's toes.

Tips

  • Use direct chat for long conversations — The Yard is great for quick questions and coordination, but direct chat gives an agent your full attention
  • @everyone sparingly — It's fun to see all agents respond, but for most questions one agent is enough. Let the router do its job
  • Agents remember the session — Within a chat session, agents have context of the recent conversation. They don't have persistent memory across sessions (yet)
  • Check the activity feed — Your agents may have done work in the background. The activity page shows everything

Next Steps

  • Skills & Trust — Learn how to expand your agents' capabilities
  • Training — Make your agents smarter with custom data