# Channels

> The channels on which people and agents ask an Octy profile: the web panel, the website widget, the LightHouse portal, Microsoft Teams, Slack, MCP and the API.

Octy™ answers in the tools the organisation already uses: its website or intranet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, the LightHouse™ portal, MCP clients and its own applications. The answer, its citations and its controls are the same on every channel.

A **channel** is a surface on which people or agents ask Octy. Each channel is switched on per profile, and each can be limited to specific classes of document.

| Channel                    | Who asks there                                                             | Status |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------ |
| Web panel                  | Anyone the profile’s audience allows, at the profile’s own address         | Built  |
| Website or intranet widget | Visitors to the organisation’s website or intranet                         | Built  |
| LightHouse portal          | People signed in to the tenant                                             | Built  |
| Microsoft Teams            | The organisation’s staff, in Teams                                         | Built  |
| Slack                      | The organisation’s staff, in Slack                                         | Built  |
| MCP                        | Other agents; GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, Claude and other MCP clients | Built  |
| API                        | The organisation’s own applications                                        | Built  |

## Requirements

| Channel                   | Requirement                                              |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Website widget            | At least one allowed origin                              |
| MCP and API               | A signed-in audience. Not available to a public audience |
| LightHouse portal         | The signed-in customers audience                         |
| Microsoft Teams and Slack | A deployment with that channel connected                 |

See [Octy profiles](/octy/profiles/#rules-every-profile-keeps).

## Web panel

A full-page panel at the profile’s own address, for any profile with the web channel on. Octy on these docs uses this panel, opened from the **Ask Octy** button on every page.

## Website or intranet widget

The widget is one script and one element on the page. Octy serves it from the deployment, with no third-party host. In this example Octy is published on the intranet’s own host:

```html
<script src="https://intranet.example.com/v1/octy/widget/octy.js" defer></script>
<aal-octy endpoint="https://intranet.example.com/v1/octy" nickname="Ada"></aal-octy>
```

The page supplies the person’s sign-in token from the intranet’s own sign-in. Behind an edge sign-in such as Cloudflare Access, the widget sends the edge’s cookie on its own origin. The content security policy needs only `script-src 'self'`, `style-src 'self'` and `connect-src` to Octy. The widget follows the page’s light or dark theme, and a React component is included.

A nickname can be added beside the name Octy. The octopus and the line “Octy™, by Atlantic Agentic” remain in the widget.

The widget for any Octy profile: one script tag keyed to the profile, for a public website or an intranet, with the bot check, the evidence panel and receipt verification built in, and its content security policy entries on the profile’s **Widget** tab. See [The website widget](/octy/widget/).

## LightHouse portal

Every LightHouse tenant has Octy in its portal. It answers questions about the tenant’s agents, runs, costs and approvals from the tenant’s LightHouse data, through the same read routes as the API, under the role of the person asking. It links to the page where a person can act, and does not act itself.

## Microsoft Teams and Slack

- **Microsoft Teams.** The organisation registers a bot for Octy in its own Entra tenant. Each message’s token is verified against the Bot Framework’s published keys before the message is read, and only the organisation’s Entra tenants are answered. Replies are Adaptive Cards with sources and links.
- **Slack.** Octy receives the Slack app’s events, signed with its signing secret, and replies in the thread with sources and link buttons.

On both channels, replies carry links only; a chat has no approve button. A person in Teams or Slack reads only the classes of document the channel allows, and cannot raise work for approval from the chat. Each channel’s secrets are held in the organisation’s own secret store.

## MCP

Other agents can ask Octy as a tool over the Model Context Protocol. In a client deployment, Octy serves an `ask_octy` tool to the organisation’s own agents, with the channel’s own classes of document. An agent that asks cannot raise work for approval.

LightHouse’s hosted MCP server provides GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio with its read-only tools, including knowledge retrieval from the organisation’s own sources. See [Use LightHouse in GitHub Copilot](/mcp/github-copilot/) and [Use LightHouse in Microsoft Copilot Studio](/mcp/copilot-studio/).

An `ask_octy` tool on LightHouse’s hosted MCP server: a profile’s short name and a question, asked as the signed-in caller, read only, under the profile’s own controls and cap. A profile that runs in a client deployment answers there, and the tool response states where to ask it.

## API

In a client deployment, Octy answers on its own HTTP route, `POST /v1/octy/chat`, with the person’s sign-in token. The answer streams back as server-sent events: the text, the citations, any notice or link, and the outcome. Publish the route through the organisation’s own front door.

An API route for each Octy profile: `POST /api/v1/octy-profiles/{id}/ask` in LightHouse for an Atlantic-hosted profile, and `POST /v1/octy/p/{slug}/ask` on the deployment’s Octy service for a profile that runs there. Both return the same response shape as the web panel.

Source: https://docs.atlanticagenticlabs.com/octy/channels/