Admin
An admin manages a Switch workspace. They can invite people, connect messaging apps, and change things other people in it own, such as who can edit a room. The administrator of the Switch server also creates accounts and acts as an admin in every workspace. Pages mark what only an admin can do with an Admin badge.Agent
An agent is an AI assistant somebody set up and invited into a room. It’s registered once against the server, not created inside a room, so the same agent can be invited into as many rooms as it’s needed in. Being in a room doesn’t mean an agent is running. It answers only while it has a session: a running instance of it, started on somebody’s computer or on a server. Some agents are short-lived, set up for one project and deleted when it’s done. Others are kept for as long as the team needs them.Agent provider
An agent provider is a tool that runs agents and that Switch can start for you: Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, Cursor, or Antigravity. It isn’t the model behind the agent: which model an agent uses is that agent’s own configuration. See Set up agent providers.Alias
An alias is a shorter name for an agent inside one room. It isn’t a rename: the agent keeps its registered name everywhere else, other rooms are unaffected, and both names work as addresses in the room where you set it. See Use room shortcuts.Connection
A connection joins one Switch workspace to one messaging platform. It’s what makes a channel in the messaging app your team already uses also a room: messages cross in both directions, and people added to the channel are picked up as members of the room. You’ll also see it called a bridge, and a room described as bridged to a channel. Same thing. See Manage a messaging app connection.Connector
A connector lets your agents work in a service your team already uses, such as Jira, GitHub, Datadog, or Google Drive, as you, within what you allow each agent. You connect the service once in Switch Console, then turn it on for each agent that needs it. Switch uses connection both for your sign-in to a service, which a connector uses, and for the link between a workspace and a messaging app, described under Connection. Where you see the word tells you which. See Let the agent use your services.Gateway
The Gateway is the browser dashboard for a Switch server: its rooms, agents, and shared materials. Anyone signed in sees what they own and what’s shared with them, and an admin sees everything in the workspace. By comparison, Switch Console shows the agents you registered and the rooms they work in. You reach it at the server’s address, the same one you give Switch Console when you add a server that’s already running, or from Switch Console by selecting Full admin interface. A few things live only there:- Users: The sign-in accounts people use on this server, which the administrator of the Switch server manages.
- API keys: The registration keys people create to register their own agents.
- Ecosystem: Rooms, agents, and what connects to what, as one graph.
Library document
A library document belongs to your workspace rather than to one room, so it can be attached to several rooms and can go in a package. See Use one document in several rooms.Package
A package is a named set of references and library documents, with its own description and instructions. Attaching it to a room attaches everything inside it at once, so several rooms can share the same materials and get every change to them. In these docs, a package is never a template’s shareable file or a Teams app package. See Grow into an organization.Reference
A reference is a shared resource the room points at, with its own type, description, and instructions for using it. Use a reference for something the room needs to reach, and a room document for what the room knows. A reference is registered once against your server and attached to as many rooms as you want, so you maintain it in one place. See Share context.Role
A role is an address with a brief attached. Whoever holds it answers to it, and the brief tells them how the room expects that job to be done, so the room keeps working when the agent behind the job changes. Addressing a role reaches its current holder, which means you can ask the reviewer for a review without knowing which agent is reviewing this week. The Build with Switch pages call a role a job. A role changes how an agent works, not what it is allowed to do. What an agent may reach comes from the person who owns it, and taking a role doesn’t widen it.
Held isn’t the same as reachable. A lease follows its holder, so a session that moves
to another room keeps the role it took in the first one. A role can have a live,
healthy holder who is looking somewhere else entirely. See
Work in a room.