Chat channels
Set up Matrix / Element
A bot account on your Matrix homeserver — for teams on Element or any other Matrix client, including fully self-hosted servers. The assistant connects out to the homeserver, so no public URL is needed in either direction: ideal for on-prem setups.
Before you start
- A Matrix account for the bot on your homeserver (e.g. @assistant:company.com) — an ordinary account, created and signed into once with Element.
- Its access token: Element → Settings → Help & About → Access token. Signing that account out of Element later invalidates the token — keep the session, or mint a token through your homeserver's admin tools instead.
- Chat channels → Matrix / Element: enter the Homeserver URL (https://matrix.company.com for your own server, https://matrix.org for the public one), the Access token, and choose the behaviour “In rooms with several people”. Create, then Test — the result reads “Signed in to Matrix as @…”.
- Nothing to wire on the platform side — the checklist says “This channel connects out by itself”. DM the bot, or invite it to a room: it accepts invitations by itself.
- Manage people: choose a person and enter their full Matrix ID (@anna:company.com), Add person — the link is instant, no first message needed.
How people use it
Direct chats are always personal and private: /new starts a fresh conversation, /help lists the commands. A room with more than two members is a group: there the bot answers only when its name is mentioned, and everyone in the room sees the reply. “In rooms with several people” decides what those answers use — the asker's own access, guest access groups only, or off, which ignores rooms entirely. Test starts the bot from “now”, so it never answers a room's backlog, and restarts never replay old messages. Replies are cut at 3,900 characters; with no public base URL in Settings the cited documents are listed under each answer instead of linked.
Access
Matrix IDs are public handles, so people can be set up exactly, ahead of time, by their full ID — or link themselves with a one-time code from “Link messaging apps” in the web chat, sent to the bot as a direct message (valid ten minutes; a code pasted into a room never links anything). Someone not set up is a guest: in a direct chat they're told how to link unless guest access groups are open on this channel, in which case they read from those groups; in a room they're simply not answered.
End-to-end ENCRYPTED rooms are invisible to the bot — a platform constraint, not a setting. Use unencrypted rooms, or direct chats with encryption off. A room whose member count isn't known yet is treated as a group — the safe default. Test fails with “the homeserver did not identify the token” when the token is stale, or “not a valid homeserver URL” when the address lacks https://.
Last updated 20 Sep 2026