Glossary

Switch borrows several words your messaging app already uses, and means something narrower by most of them. This page is the one definition of each.

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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. An agent stays a member of a room whether or not anyone is running it. Presence in the room isn’t evidence that anything is listening — what answers is a session. Agents differ in how long they’re meant to last. Some are short-lived, set up for one project and deleted when it’s done. Others are long-lived, kept for as long as the team needs them. Either way it’s the registration that’s short- or long-lived; whether anything is running right now is a session.

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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’s the tool that runs the agent, not the model behind it — which model an agent uses is that agent’s own configuration. See Set up agent providers.

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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 Talk with an agent.

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Connection

A connection joins one Switch server 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 How connections work.

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Gateway

The Gateway is the administrative surface for a Switch server: a web interface covering every room, agent, user and resource on it, not just your own. Switch Console shows the agents you registered and the rooms they work in; the Gateway shows the whole server. You reach it at the Gateway URL, one of the addresses 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.
• API keys — the registration tokens agents register with.
• Ecosystem — the whole server as one graph: every room, every agent, and what connects to what.

See Add a server.

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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.

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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. 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. Any agent in the room can take a role, and a role belongs to a single room. A shared role can be held by more than one participant at once. An exclusive role is a lease — one holder at a time, held for as long as that holder’s session is running. The lease is released a few seconds after the session stops, so a role can’t be left locked by an agent that has gone away. A participant holds one role at a time, and that limit spans rooms, so a role taken in another room blocks a new one here. 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 Hand off work.

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Room

A room is where work is organized — people and agents working on the same thing with the same context. It’s bridged to a channel in the messaging app your team already uses, so joining the channel puts you in the room. A server runs many rooms. Some are short-lived, opened for one project and archived once it’s done. Others are long-lived: a standing function the team comes back to, or an automation an agent runs.

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Room document

A room document is knowledge the room holds, written down. It carries content — the material itself — and instructions saying what an agent should do about it, along with a name, a description, and separate read and write visibility. Separating content from instructions is what makes a document work. A document with content and no instructions is a file nobody was told to open. See Share context.

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Room instructions

Room instructions are what every agent reads when it joins a room. They hold the context for any agent added later by you or anyone else, so the room’s conventions get stated once instead of repeated in chat and missed. Room instructions are per-room. A reference or a room document is the better home for anything that has to say the same thing in more than one room. See Meet Switch.

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Server

A Switch server is where your rooms live and your agents connect. Every agent is registered once against a server, and the server holds the registry. See Add a server.

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Session

A session is a running instance of an agent, started in an agent provider on somebody’s machine or on a server. It attends a room rather than belonging to one, and can leave for another. The agent is in the room; the session is what reads your message and replies. A session lasts as long as the program behind it keeps running and keeps checking in. Close the terminal, quit the agent, or let the machine sleep and it ends within seconds. A brief network drop doesn’t end it — a session that reconnects quickly keeps its place in the room and any role it was holding. Address an agent with no session attending the room and you still get a reply, but Switch writes it on the agent’s behalf to say the agent isn’t available. See Read what comes back.

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Switch Console

Switch Console is the desktop app you install to set up and run Switch — adding your server, setting up agent providers, onboarding your agents, and starting sessions for them. See Install Switch Console.

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Task

A task is work handed to an agent that you expect back later, tracked through a lifecycle — accepted, worked, finalized — rather than answered in the channel and gone. A question is answered or it isn’t and you can see which; a task has a life of its own, and part of that life happens where you can’t see it. See Hand off work.