Channels

Channels are group conversations where multiple users and agents collaborate in a shared thread.

What Are Channels?

A channel is a persistent group chat within Insulin. Unlike a standard conversation, which is between you and one agent, a channel brings together multiple team members and multiple agents into a single thread. Everyone in the channel sees the same messages, can ask questions, and can interact with agents that have been added.

Channels are useful when a task requires input from several people or benefits from multiple specialized agents working together. Inside a channel you get Messages and Files tabs (the Jobs tab is only available in one-on-one conversations). Sending messages requires the USER role or higher — VIEWER members can read but not send.

Creating a Channel

1. Click the + button next to Channels in the sidebar
2. Enter a channel name and optional description
3. Add agents as members, each with a short role label describing its function
4. Choose the ownership type:
   • Personal (only you) — The channel is private to you. You can add both user-level and org-level agents.
   • Organization (shareable) — The channel belongs to the organization and can be shared with team members. Only org-level agents can be added as members.
5. Click Create

You can also set a custom icon for the channel to help distinguish it visually in the sidebar.

Ownership cannot be changed after a channel is created.

Channel Roles

Every user in a channel has one of these access roles:

The user who creates a channel is automatically the OWNER. On org-level channels, ownership can be transferred to another organization administrator (see Editing and Deleting Channels).

Organization admins do not automatically become channel admins. Org-level channel access comes from explicit membership or org-wide sharing, so private collaboration spaces stay private until the channel owner or admin shares them.

Channel Knowledge Base

A channel can connect to exactly one knowledge base to ground its agents on shared context. Set or change it in the channel Settings panel.

When you connect a knowledge base, you choose an access mode:

Member agents are always read-only against the channel knowledge base, regardless of the mode — only the planner can write when Edit is selected.

Adding Members

Channel members can be users or agents. Both are managed from a single Members panel (open it with the members icon in the channel header), which has an Agents section and a People section.

To add a user (org-level channels only):

1. Open the channel
2. Click the members icon in the channel header
3. In the People section, add a user from your organization
4. Assign an access role (ADMIN, EDITOR, USER, or VIEWER)

Only org-level channels can have user members. Personal channels are limited to you and your agents.

To add an agent:

1. Open the channel
2. Click the members icon
3. In the Agents section, add an agent
4. Assign a role label that describes the agent’s function (e.g., “researcher”, “analyst”)

Each channel holds up to 20 agent members and up to 20 user members. If a channel is at its cap, remove an inactive member before adding another one.

Joining, Previewing, and Leaving Channels

An owner or admin can share an organization channel with the whole company using the Share with entire organization toggle in the Members panel. When enabled, they pick a default shared role of Viewer, User, or Editor (ADMIN is not offered for org-wide sharing). Shared channels become discoverable and appear in the sidebar for other members. You can:

• Preview a shared channel to read its messages before joining (read-only)
• Join a shared channel to start participating at its default shared role

Your effective role is determined by the channel’s shared role setting or the role explicitly assigned to you by the channel owner or admin.

Leaving a channel: Any member except the owner can leave a channel they no longer need. The owner cannot leave — they must first transfer ownership to someone else.

How Agents Participate

When you send a message in a channel, agents added as members can respond. You can mention a specific agent using @agent-name to direct your message to that agent, or mention @All to address every specialist agent in the channel at once. The mention autocomplete shows agents and users in the channel.

Each agent member has a role label (like “researcher” or “reviewer”) that describes its function in the channel. This label is visible to other participants so everyone understands which agent serves which purpose.

How coordination works depends on the channel’s ownership type:

• Personal channels — The built-in Insulin agent acts as the coordinator. It can invoke specialist agents on your behalf, so you can ask a broad question and let Insulin route the work.
• Organization channels — There is no coordinator member. Specialist agents respond directly to the @mentions they receive, and Insulin only steps in to synthesize a combined answer after multiple specialists have replied.

Editing and Deleting Channels

Channel owners and admins can:

• Rename the channel or update its description
• Change the icon
• Remove members (both users and agents)
• Transfer ownership — available on org-level channels only. Both the current owner and the new owner must be organization administrators. The new owner does not need to already be a member; they are added automatically on transfer.
• Delete the channel entirely (OWNER only)

Use Cases

• Deal review — Add a sales agent, a data analyst agent, and your sales team to review a deal together.
• Incident response — Bring together operations, engineering, and an alert-monitoring agent to coordinate a response.
• Weekly reporting — Set up a channel with a reporting agent and stakeholders who need visibility into weekly metrics.
• Cross-functional collaboration — Combine agents with different specializations (CRM, marketplace data, revenue analysis) in one thread so the team gets multi-domain answers without switching contexts.