Working with Bots

Quick Start gets a bot running; this page is about working with one well — what to delegate, how to phrase it, where rules should live, and when one bot should become two — followed by the configuration reference: creating a bot and every tab on its detail page.

What to hand off

A task is a good fit for a bot when three things hold:

• A clear outcome. You can say what should exist when the work is done — a file, a message, a table.
• Reachable sources. The files, sites, or conversations involved are ones the bot can actually get to: uploaded into its workspace, connected as a channel or service, or public.
• A checkable result. You can tell at a glance whether the output is right, so reviewing stays cheap.

When all three hold, start read-only anyway: let the bot read and organize first, review a few outputs, then grant more. Every scenario in Use Cases begins this way.

State the request

A good request answers five questions — outcome, source, constraints, format, checkpoint. The table is in Quick Start; here is what the difference looks like in practice.

Vague

Keep an eye on tech news and send me anything interesting.

No source (which sites or repositories?), no delivery time, and "interesting" is a judgment the bot has to make for you. Every digest becomes a coin flip.

Instead:

Specific

Every weekday at 8am, summarize releases and notable issues from the repositories I follow over the last 24 hours, and send them to me as one digest. Cite a source for every item; if something is uncertain, say so instead of guessing.

Vague

Clean up this spreadsheet.

"Clean" is undefined: which rows count as dirty, may the original file change, and what should come back? The bot has to guess three times before it starts.

Instead:

Specific

Remove every row with an empty email column from the CSV I just uploaded. Give me the cleaned file and tell me how many rows you dropped. Do not modify the original file.

The pattern in both rewrites: name the sources, bound the actions, and make the result something you can verify in one look.

Where rules live

Two kinds of instruction, two homes:

• Permanent rules belong in the bot's instructions on its detail page — its role, format standards, standing constraints. They apply to every future session.
• One-off asks belong in the message — today's file, this week's exception.

When a correction should stick, promote it: phrase it as a durable rule and move it into the instructions, exactly as Quick Start step 7 shows. When a whole routine repeats, save it as a Skill so one sentence invokes it; preferences the bot should recall on its own belong in Memory.

When to split bots

One bot, one job. A bot with a single focused job accumulates context that keeps helping it; a do-everything bot dilutes its own instructions and memory. Both Quick Start and the Overview make the same point, so here is only the practical test: when a new request has a different audience, different sources, or needs different permissions than the bot's current job, create a second bot.

Each bot gets its own workspace, memory, channels, and permission boundary, and bots cannot see into each other. Splitting also keeps permissions honest — the bot that only reads release notes never needs the right to execute commands.

Approval habits

Grant the level a job needs and no more — workspace access is tiered from chat through read, write, execute, and manage; see Access Control.

In practice:

1. Start new routines read-only and keep write and execute tool calls behind approval.
2. Review the first few runs before widening anything.
3. Keep actions that leave the workspace — messages to other people, anything external — behind approval even after the routine feels safe.

This is the same path the Use Cases checklist walks: approving a few requests costs far less than undoing a wrong write.

---

Creating a Bot

1. Navigate to the Bots page from the sidebar.
2. Click the Create Bot button.
3. Fill in the basic info:
   • Display Name: The name users will see in chats.
   • Avatar: A URL for the bot's profile picture.
   • Timezone: Optional per-bot timezone. If left empty, the bot inherits the user or system timezone.
   • ACL Preset: Quick-start access policy such as allow_all or private_only.
4. Click Create.

---

Bot Detail Page

Once created, clicking on a bot card takes you to its Detail Page, where you can manage its entire lifecycle through specialized tabs.

Tab Overview

Tab	Description
Overview	Health checks for workspace runtime, database, channels, and memory.
General	Core runtime settings: chat/title/image models, memory/search/TTS bindings, timezone, language, reasoning, and danger zone.
Desktop	Workspace display runtime, headed browser availability, and active display sessions.
Workspace	Container-backed workspace lifecycle, snapshots, data export/import.
Network	Workspace network and overlay provider status/actions.
Memory	Browse, search, create, edit, and compact memories.
Platforms	Channel configurations such as Telegram, Discord, Feishu, QQ, WeCom, WeChat, DingTalk, and Web.
Access	ACL rules and default access behavior.
Tool Approval	Human approval settings for tools that require confirmation.
Agents	ACP-compatible coding agents, such as Codex and Claude Code, that can be enabled for chat workspace use.
Connectors	Third-party service connections (OAuth or API key) via Connect-It: status, enable/disable, reauthorize, disconnect.
Hooks	Bot-scoped automation rules stored in /data/.memoh/hooks.json.
MCP	MCP connection management (Stdio, Remote, OAuth).
Compaction	Session context compaction settings and logs.
Schedule	Cron-based scheduled tasks and execution logs.
Skills	Markdown-based skill files that define bot personality and capabilities.

Files, Terminal, and the desktop/browser panes are also available inside the chat workspace UI — use the workspace side of a chat when you want to inspect files, run shell commands, or watch the bot's browser and desktop without leaving the conversation.

---

Configuring the Bot's Core Settings

After creating a bot, the most important step is configuring its runtime settings. These settings are split across a few tabs instead of living in one giant form.

1. Navigate to your bot's Detail Page.
2. Start with the General tab for chat/runtime bindings.
3. Use the Schedule tab for recurring autonomous tasks.
4. Use the Compaction tab for session context compaction behavior.
5. Use the Access tab to refine ACL rules after the initial ACL preset.

If you have not created these resources yet, set them up first:

• Providers And Models
• Built-in Memory Provider
• Search Providers
• TTS: Edge
• Agents / ACP

---

General Tab Reference

The General tab contains the settings that shape everyday conversation behavior.

Field	Description
Chat Model	The main LLM used for generating chat responses.
Title Model	Optional model used to generate session titles.
Image Generation Model	Optional model used by image-generation features. Pick a chat model that supports image-output.
Memory Provider	The memory backend assigned to the bot. The built-in provider can optionally define its own memory and embedding models.
Search Provider	The search engine used for web browsing capabilities.
TTS Model	Optional speech model used for text-to-speech output. Speech models come from the TTS Providers flow, not the normal chat provider flow.
Timezone	Per-bot timezone. If empty, Memoh inherits the user timezone and then falls back to the system timezone.
Language	The bot's primary communication language.
Reasoning Effort	Available when the selected chat model exposes reasoning compatibility. Options depend on the model (for example low, medium, high).

Notes:

• The Image Generation Model is intentionally separate from the normal chat model so you can dedicate an image-capable model only to visual generation tasks.
• The TTS Model comes from the TTS provider flow and uses speech models from the configured speech provider.
• The selected chat model's context_window influences session status reporting and Context Compaction.

---

Compaction Tab Reference

Compaction is now about session context compaction, not memory maintenance.

Field	Description
Compaction Enabled	Enable or disable automatic context compaction.
Compaction Threshold	Estimated token threshold that triggers compaction.
Compaction Ratio	How aggressively the session context should be reduced.
Compaction Model	Optional dedicated model used to summarize old session context.

The Compaction tab also exposes compaction logs so you can see recent successful, pending, or failed runs.

For the runtime behavior, see Context Compaction.

---

Access And ACL

At creation time, the bot starts from an ACL preset. After that, use the Access tab for fine-grained control.

Two layers matter:

• ACL Preset gives you a sensible starting policy for a new bot.
• ACL Default Effect controls the default result when no rule matches.

Use the Access tab to refine conversation, group, and thread rules after the initial setup.

---

Discuss-Related Advanced Settings

Most users only need the chat and discuss behavior described in Sessions.

If you manage bot settings through the API or custom automation, the settings schema also includes discuss_probe_model_id for discuss-mode specific setups. Treat it as an advanced setting rather than a required field for normal bot creation.

---

Workspace Files And Terminal

Workspace files and terminals are available from the chat workspace UI after the bot has an active workspace runtime. From there you can:

• Browse and edit files in the bot workspace.
• Open terminal sessions inside the workspace runtime.
• Use display/browser tools when the bot workspace has display support enabled.

For file workflows, see Files. For headed browser and desktop workflows, see Browser / Computer Use.

---

Deleting a Bot

To permanently remove a bot and all its associated data (including workspace files and memory):

1. Navigate to the General tab in the Bot Detail page.
2. Scroll to the Danger Zone at the bottom.
3. Click Delete Bot and confirm the action.

Warning: This action is irreversible. All persistent data for this bot will be lost.