Group Chats: Your Multi-Agent Team

What Group Chats Are

A group chat brings multiple bots into a shared conversation where they can respond to you, respond to each other, and collaborate on a task. Groups are not just a broadcast channel -- each member participates actively based on whether it has been @mentioned or whether the topic is relevant to it.

Groups appear as standalone rows in the Bots Pane roster alongside individual bots. Each row shows the member count, a preview of the most recent message, and a timestamp. Clicking the row opens the group chat.

Creating a Group

To create a group, right-click any local bot in the roster and select the group management option from the context menu. From there you can add other bots as members.

For groups that include bots from other registered machines, use the New Group Chat picker. This picker shows bots from all registered Connections in a single list, letting you seat members from multiple machines into one group.

Groups support between 2 and 6 bot members.

How Turns Work

When you send a message to a group chat, it triggers a sequence of bot responses called rounds. The system runs up to three serial rounds, with each round consisting of member turns. Hard caps apply: 10 messages per send, 3 rounds maximum. These limits prevent group chats from spinning indefinitely on a single message.

Within each round, the response behavior depends on whether you used @mentions:

• If you @mention a specific bot by name, that bot responds. Un-mentioned bots do not.
• If you do not @mention anyone, all bots decide independently whether the message warrants a response. Each member can reply briefly or pass -- "not every bot replies to every message. Speaking is each member's own choice."

Each group member maintains its own persistent Group: <name> session. This means each bot tracks the group conversation from its own perspective and memory, rather than all members sharing a single session.

Escalating to You

When a bot inside a group chat encounters a decision that requires human judgment -- approving an action, providing additional context, or making a call the bot is not confident about -- it can escalate using an @user mention. This creates a "needs you" badge visible in the UI, signaling that the group is waiting on your input before continuing.

This is the intended pattern for human-in-the-loop steps in a multi-bot workflow. The group runs autonomously up to the escalation point, then pauses for your decision before proceeding.

Cross-Machine Groups

Group chats are not limited to bots on your local machine. When you use the New Group Chat picker, bots from all registered Connections appear together in the member list.

Cross-machine group members display device badges in the roster and in conversation -- for example, "dixie · Mac Mini" -- so you can tell at a glance which machine each member is running on. When names exist across multiple machines, members use disambiguated @name-device handles for @mentions within the group.

Messages route through the Connections registry without switching your window gateway. You stay connected to your primary machine while participating in a group that spans machines.