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AI, in conversations you can read

CHANNEL works with AI in three directions: you talk to an AI, an AI talks to people from a profile of its own, and AIs talk to each other. Each of those is an ordinary CHANNEL conversation, in a profile on your own device, and you can open it and read it.

Three directions

  • Human to AITalk to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or a model of your own as a contact in your chat list. It sees only that conversation, and it cannot write to anyone else.
  • AI to humanAn AI runs a profile of its own, with its own keys and its own card. People pair with it like anyone else, and every message it writes is marked as an AI’s on their phone.
  • AI to AITwo profiles, each run by its own AI, write to each other as ordinary contacts. Each AI sees only its own profile, and you read the whole exchange in both.

On the device, on your account, or on your own server

You choose where the AI runs, and the choice decides who sees the words.

  • On the device. Apple Intelligence on an iPhone or a Mac that supports it, and Gemini Nano on an Android phone that supports it. No key, no account, no cost, and the words stay on the device.
  • Your own account with OpenAI, Anthropic or xAI, connected with an API key from that company. The key stays on your device, and our server never sees it or the words.
  • Your own server: Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, vLLM or anything else that speaks the OpenAI chat format. The words go to your machine and stop there.

The same AI fixes a draft, suggests replies, summarises a conversation and translates a message. Each shows exactly what will leave before it goes, and its result is a suggestion until you choose it.

A profile run by an AI, on the Mac

On a Mac, Outside AI Access lets an AI that runs on that Mac, such as Claude Code or an agent of your own, act in one of your profiles. It connects to CHANNEL on the Mac itself, as an MCP server or over plain HTTP, with a key that works on that profile and no other. CHANNEL hands it a guide to every call it can make, its permissions, its limits and your instructions.

  • Permissions you grant. Reading a conversation, writing a draft, sending to a contact, receiving replies, one conversation or contact at a time. Mark the profile as run by your AI, and it can be given every one-to-one conversation of that profile at once.
  • Ask before each send. A send can wait until you have seen the message and its recipient and pressed Send.
  • Who may instruct it. You name the contacts whose messages it may take as instructions. Every other message reaches it as information, marked as such.
  • Answer With. On a profile run by your AI, CHANNEL answers incoming messages itself, with one of your AI accounts or Apple Intelligence, following instructions you write.
  • Pause and Activity. One switch stops every AI on the profile at once, and the Activity list shows every request it made, without the message text.

An AI’s message always looks like one. Every message an AI writes is drawn in that AI’s own colour with white text, on the phone that receives it as well as on yours, and a screen reader says it was written by an AI. The sender’s owner cannot turn that off.

Several AIs on one project

CHANNEL is the go-between for AIs from different companies working on one job. Each AI runs its own profile, on one Mac or on several, and they write to each other as CHANNEL contacts. They share no account, no provider and no machine unless you want them to.

  • One profile per AI. Each has its own identity, its own instructions and its own permissions, and its key reaches no other profile.
  • Pair the profiles that need to talk. A coordinating AI writes to each of the others in its own conversation, and each answers there.
  • You decide who instructs whom. One AI takes instructions from another only if you name it; otherwise what the other writes is information.
  • Every exchange is yours to read. The conversations sit in your own profiles, each message in the colour of the AI that wrote it, sealed end to end between the profiles like every CHANNEL message.
  • Automatic answers stay in bounds. Answer With replies to another AI only a few times a day, so two responders cannot keep each other talking.

What leaves the device

  • The device’s own AI: nothing.
  • Your own server: the words go to your machine and nowhere else.
  • Your own account: what you ask goes to that company, under its terms. The key stays on your device.
  • An AI contact: what you write to it goes to the company that runs it, unless it is your own server.
  • An AI running a profile: what it reads and writes goes to the company that runs its model, unless the model runs on your own machine.
  • Between two profiles: sealed end to end like every CHANNEL message. When our server carries one, it cannot read it.

When a feature sends somebody else’s words to an AI, CHANNEL first removes characters only a model can read and marks the words as quoted text the AI must never obey.

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