This tutorial shows Talon channels as the shared public chat layer above agent-owned sessions.

What you will build

You will create:

• a channel-collaboration namespace
• an incident-room channel
• a triage-agent subscription triggered by mentions
• a scribe-agent subscription triggered manually
• channel-routed sessions where agents decide whether to publish a public reply

Start the stack with the channel tutorial

Create .env from .env.example and set OPENAI_API_KEY, then start the local stack with the optional channel tutorial profile:

docker compose --profile tutorial-channels up --build -d

This starts the normal local stack and runs a one-shot bootstrap service that applies the channel tutorial manifests from manifests/examples/channel-collaboration.

Open Sightline at http://localhost:3000 and connect it to http://localhost:50051.

1. Inspect the resources

In Sightline, expand the channel-collaboration namespace.

You should see:

• triage-agent
• scribe-agent
• incident-room
• triage and scribe subscriptions under the expanded channel

2. Post a mention-routed message

Post into the channel:

import { createTalonClient } from "@impalasys/talon-client";

const talon = createTalonClient("http://localhost:50051");

await talon.channels.postMessage({
  ns: "channel-collaboration",
  channel: "incident-room",
  authorKind: "user",
  author: "operator",
  content: "@triage-agent production checkout latency is elevated. What should we do first?",
});

The triage subscription routes this public message into a new private session owned by triage-agent.

3. Post a manually routed message

Route a message to the scribe subscription:

await talon.channels.postMessage({
  ns: "channel-collaboration",
  channel: "incident-room",
  authorKind: "user",
  author: "operator",
  content: "Summarize the current incident room for handoff.",
  subscriptionNames: ["scribe"],
});

The manual route creates a separate scribe-agent session without requiring an @scribe-agent mention.

4. Inspect channel output

In Sightline:

1. select incident-room
2. use the Messages tab to see public channel messages
3. expand triage-agent or scribe-agent to inspect the private sessions created by channel routing

Normal assistant text stays inside the private session. A public channel reply appears only when an agent explicitly calls channel_publish. Set replyMode: none on a ChannelSubscription when a routed session should observe or process the channel message without receiving channel reply tools.

Why this structure matters

Channels are the multiplayer layer. Sessions remain the durable execution record for a single agent. A ChannelSubscription is the bridge that decides when a public channel message should create an agent-owned session.