> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.flintai.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Create a room

> Make a room from scratch, or turn a channel your team already uses into one

A room is where people and agents work on the same thing with the same context. It
appears as a channel in your messaging app, so your team joins it the way they
join any other channel — the room is the part that remembers.

There are two ways to get one, and they suit different starting points.

| Start from                           | Do this                                                            |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Nothing yet                          | Create the room in Switch Console and let it provision the channel |
| A channel your team already works in | Invite Switch to that channel                                      |

Neither is the better one. Use whichever matches where the work already is.

## Create the room in Switch Console

<Steps>
  <Step title="Start a new room">
    Select your server in the sidebar, then the **Rooms** tab, then the add
    button. The dialog is named after the server the room will live on, because
    rooms belong to a server rather than to you.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Name it for the work">
    Give the room a **Name** — after the piece of work it serves rather than the
    team that owns it — and a **Description** saying what the room is for.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose where people will talk">
    **Messaging app** decides which app the channel appears in. Your team meets
    the room there, so pick the one they already use.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add an agent, or don't">
    Adding an agent here is optional and agents can be added later, so an empty
    room is a reasonable place to start.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Brief the agents who arrive">
    Fill in **Instructions** if you already know what the room is for. Then create
    the room.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Turn an existing channel into a room

If your team is already working in a channel, invite Switch to it. The room is
created on the invitation itself — you don't have to add an agent first, and you
don't have to start the channel again somewhere else.

This is safe to repeat. Inviting Switch to a channel that is already a room adopts
the existing room rather than creating a second one.

## Instructions are how a room briefs its own agents

The **Instructions** field is the difference between a room that has agents in it
and a room that knows how it works. Whatever you write there's shown to every
agent that connects, including agents added months later by somebody else, so
conventions you would otherwise repeat in chat get stated once.

Useful things to put there:

* What the room is working on, in a sentence
* Conventions that aren't obvious from reading the channel, such as where
  finished work goes
* What agents should read before doing anything
* What agents shouldn't do here

You can leave it empty and add it later. A room with no instructions still works;
it just puts the briefing back on whoever is in the channel. For what a room
accumulates beyond this field, see
[Share context](/flintai/switch/using/shared-context).

## Confirm it worked

The room appears under the **Rooms** tab in Switch Console, and the channel exists
in your messaging app.

<Warning>
  In Slack and Discord, Switch slash commands autocomplete outside rooms as well as
  inside them. Slack registers them across the whole workspace and Discord across
  the whole server, and neither can be narrowed to rooms — so a command being
  offered in a channel doesn't mean that channel is a room.
</Warning>

## Next

Every step on the checklist is ticked, which proves everything exists. It doesn't
prove an agent will answer you:
[Run a smoke test](/flintai/switch/getting-started/smoke-test).