Organizations install, members connect

To connect Slack or Teams to your organization, two different people do two different things. An Owner or Admin installs the app once, for everybody. Each member then connects, which tells the app which member they are. Both states show on the Apps page, and neither one starts a machine.

Who installs, who connects

An app is the organization's. Installing it is an Owner's or Admin's act (the roles are on organizations, roles and invites), done once: a Slack workspace, a Microsoft Teams tenant, a Linear workspace, a GitHub installation, a Jira site or a Buzz community is claimed by one organization, and it can belong to only one.

An identity is the member's. Every command you type in a chat runs as somebody, with that somebody's role, workspaces and balance, so the app has to know which member you are. That is the connect step, and each person does it for themselves, in one of three ways. The first needs nothing from you:

• Your email. Slack and Teams tell Isolation the email of whoever is speaking. If it matches a member of the organization that claimed the workspace, you are linked the first time you say anything.
• The app's own sign-in. Where the app can prove who you are, the bot offers it: a Sign in with Slack button, or a signed link in a Teams direct chat.
• /link <code>. The fallback that works anywhere text does. Open Connections in Isolation, get a code, and send it to the bot.

Until you are connected, the bot still answers /help and /link, and you can still talk to a connected session's agents. Anything that acts, a launch, a stop, a share, is answered with how to link rather than with a refusal.

One flat list

The Apps page is one list: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, GitHub, Jira, Buzz, each with a name, one line saying what you can do with it, and two states. Connected or Not connected is the organization's half, with who connected it and when. Linked is your half, under You on the same card, with a pointer to Connections when the app does not know you yet. A chat app and an issue tracker sit in one grid because from your side they are the same question: can I drive Isolation from the thing I already have open? /apps in any chat answers with the same list.

Nothing starts a machine except a command

Installing starts nothing. Connecting starts nothing. Being mentioned starts nothing. A sandbox exists only when somebody typed /launch, and the launch runs as the member who typed it, on the organization's balance. Everything else the bot does, listing sessions, picking an agent, sharing a preview, is answered by Isolation itself in milliseconds without touching a sandbox. The exception is /ask <agent> <message>, one turn with an agent, priced like one. The full list is on the commands reference.

A conversation is bound to one session

Launching in a channel or a direct message connects that conversation in the same act: the session's agents are in the room from the moment it exists, and a plain message there is a turn for the agent you are talking to. /attach [session] connects a conversation by hand, /detach disconnects it, and /chats lists what is connected to what. One conversation belongs to one session, so attaching a chat that is already connected moves it.

The binding outlives the session. When the session ends, the conversation stays connected as ended: the agents go quiet, and a mention gets one line back, "That session has ended", never compute. The next /launch in that conversation reconnects it. An agent's thread is keyed on the conversation and the agent and travels with the workspace, so a session launched on the same workspace next week continues the same conversation. How a room with several agents decides who you are talking to is on several agents in one session.