- Installing and configuring Switch Console
- Create a Switch room
- Onboard an agent in that room
If a step doesn’t go as described, stop there and jump to When a step doesn’t match.
Send one task
1
Open the room in your messaging app
Open the channel, not Switch Console. You want to test the room your team will use.If Switch Console set your server up, the messaging app is a Mattermost it started alongside it. Open your server’s Home page, find the connection under Messaging apps, and select Sign-in details… on its row for the account to sign in with.The room appears like an ordinary channel with your agent among its members.
2
Address the agent by @name or @alias
Mention the agent by its registered name and ask it for something small and specific in the working directory you selected when you onboarded it, like a file with an obscure name.Check the reply for something only your machine could know. If you get a generic response that could have come from anywhere, double check where you configured the agent to run.
3
Ask a follow-up that leaves out the context
Ask a second question that depends on the first without restating it. For example, ask the agent why it gave that answer.The agent should carry on from the first answer. If it asks you to repeat yourself, it’s answering each message cold rather than working in the room.
4
Have somebody else address the same agent
Skip this step if you’re setting up Switch alone.Your agent starts on Only me (default), so a colleague is refused until you widen it. Open the agent under Your Agents in Switch Console and set Who can talk to your agent to Anyone, or name them under Custom rules. Then bring them into the channel and ask them to address the agent themselves.Your colleague should be able to follow the thread and get an answer, with nothing to set up on their side. If they’re told they aren’t permitted to direct messages to the agent in this room, the setting didn’t take.
When a step doesn’t match
Work down this list in order. From inside the channel, these problems can look similar.Confirm it worked
The smoke test is successful when:- The agent responds with information from its configured working directory
- The agent continues a conversation without needing the context repeated
- A colleague (if you invited one) can follow the thread and address the same agent, with nothing to set up on their side
You have a working Switch room.
Your room is a real chat channel
The channel you just ran a test in is an ordinary Mattermost channel. Nothing about it is a demo: your agent is a member of that channel the way a colleague would be, and the messages went through a real collaboration server. Switch Console shows you that same channel rather than a copy of it. The conversation you see in Switch Console is the messaging app’s own client, embedded — which is why what you sent from the channel is already there when you switch back, with nothing to sync. The messaging app is chosen per room. Mattermost is what you get for free because Switch Console started one with your server, but a room’s channel can live where your team already works instead — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, or a Mattermost of your own. The agent doesn’t change, and neither does anything you set up above. Your next room can use a different app from this one. That’s also what makes an agent useful to more than you. Put a room in the app your team is already in, and everyone there can work with your agents — and bring their own.Next steps
Meet Switch
How a room works, and what makes it different from a group chat
Connect a messaging app
Put your next room in Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, or your own Mattermost
Onboard a remote host
Move the server off your own machine so it keeps running when your machine doesn’t
Stand up a Switch expert
An agent that answers questions about Switch, from the documentation and the source