Platforms

Ethos ships with platform adapters that connect your agent to messaging and communication services. Each adapter translates platform-specific events into the IncomingMessage format the AgentLoop understands, and routes AgentEvent output back to the platform.

Available adapters

Adapter	Status	Use case
CLI	Stable	Interactive terminal chat, development, scripting
Telegram	Stable	Personal bot, team assistant, private group
Discord	Stable	Server bot, moderation assistant, community Q&A
Slack	Stable	Workspace assistant, workflow automation

How adapters work

All adapters implement PlatformAdapter:

interface PlatformAdapter {
  name: string;
  start(): Promise<void>;
  stop(): Promise<void>;
  send(message: OutgoingMessage): Promise<void>;
  onMessage(handler: (msg: IncomingMessage) => Promise<void>): () => void;
}

The gateway layer:

1. Receives an IncomingMessage from the adapter
2. Routes it to an AgentLoop (creating a session if needed)
3. Streams AgentEvent output back through the adapter's send()

Sessions per platform

Each platform gets session isolation by default. The session key convention is:

Platform	Session key
CLI	cli:<cwd-basename>
Telegram	telegram:<chat-id>
Discord	discord:<channel-id>
Slack	slack:<channel-id>

Users on the same Telegram chat share a session; users on different chats don't.

Selecting an adapter

Set in ~/.ethos/config.yaml:

adapters:
  - telegram

# Or run multiple simultaneously
adapters:
  - telegram
  - discord

Or pass at runtime:

ethos --adapter telegram
ethos --adapter discord

Multi-adapter deployment

You can run multiple adapters from a single Ethos instance. The gateway routes each incoming message to the correct AgentLoop based on the platform and session.

This is useful for a "universal assistant" that's available on both Telegram and Discord simultaneously, with separate session histories per platform.

Building a custom adapter

See Adding a Platform Adapter for the full implementation guide.