A channel is a surface a person uses to talk to BandBrain. The agent treats every channel uniformly — same brain, same tool kit, same identity across surfaces.
The channels
SMS (per-band number)
Every BandBrain tenant gets a dedicated long-code SMS number provisioned via Twilio. Find it on /dashboard/channels → SMS section.
Roster members text that number with any question. The agent replies as text. Voice notes attached via MMS get transcribed and answered.
Compliance: A2P 10DLC, per-recipient opt-in tracked, STOP/HELP handled at the carrier edge. New numbers added to the roster get an opt-in SMS automatically.
See SMS setup.
Every band has a dedicated alias: <yourband>@bandbrain.ai. Find it on Channels page or the home page's Channels quadrant.
Email is ingestion-only — BandBrain reads and absorbs inbound mail (attachments, body text, contact info from signatures) but does NOT auto-reply. Outbound email only goes through the comms broadcast surface, never as auto-responses to inbound mail.
See Email channel.
Web chat
The Ask BandBrain box on the home page is a web-based chat surface for admins logged into the dashboard. Same agent, no SMS limits.
Coming soon. Not live yet.
Identity across channels
Every person has ONE identity in BandBrain regardless of which channel they use. So if Matt texts the bot from his phone AND emails it, the bot knows it's the same Matt — pulls the same memory, the same permissions, the same conversation history.
This is mediated by the person_channels table — each row maps a (channel, channel_id) pair to a person_id. Adding multiple channels to one roster member just adds rows there.
What the agent treats the same vs differently
Same:
- Tool kit, system prompt, model
- Tour data access + category permissions
- Memory + identity
Different:
- SMS replies are formatted strictly: 320 char target, plain text, no markdown, structured labels with line breaks.
- Web replies can be longer, can use markdown, and don't have the brevity rule.
- Email is read-only — agent doesn't reply.
See SMS reply format rules for the details.