Chat

A chat room is Openbook's real-time layer inside a space: channels for teams and topics, direct messages for one-on-ones, presence so you know who's around, typing indicators, and unread badges that keep you honest. If your team has used Slack, they'll be at home in the first minute — the difference is that chat lives inside the workspace, next to the boards, docs, and feed it's usually about.

A chat room is not the same thing as organization chat. A chat room belongs to one space and its messages are Openbook's alone. Organization chat is the bubble in the corner of every page and the Chat page in your organization's sidebar; it lives at the Bookbag account service and the same conversations appear in Madebook and Bookbag. The two never mix. The comparison table at the end of Organization chat sets out every difference.

Create a chat room

Click + in your space's sidebar and pick the chat room type. Visibility works like any room: everyone in the space, or certain people.

Channels and DMs

Organize conversation into channels by team, project, or topic — public discussion stays findable instead of trapped in DMs. Use direct messages for the things that don't need an audience: a quick question that would otherwise become a fifteen-minute call.

A #launch channel during release week, with everyone's presence visible, is the shape this is built for.

The signals that make chat feel alive

• Presence shows who's online before you ping them — a small thing that saves a hundred tiny frustrations a week.
• Typing indicators tell you a reply is coming.
• Unread badges tell you exactly what you haven't read.

Everything runs on Openbook's real-time sync, so messages, presence, and typing updates land instantly. It behaves like a dedicated chat app because, underneath, it is one.

Ask an agent in a channel

A channel can be connected to an AI agent room, and then anyone who may post there can mention @agent to put a question to it. The channel does not run the agent itself: the agent answers in the channel but thinks in the room it belongs to, and private conversations in that room are never read and never copied into the channel.

The ask appears as a card in the channel, moving through Queued, Working and Answered, with Stop and Retry on it. Because the reply lands in the channel, everyone who can read the channel sees it — the composer says so before you send. Files are not part of an agent request yet, so the mention is text only.

One agent per channel. Connecting a different one replaces it rather than adding a second, and connecting at all needs room settings access on both the channel and the AI room. Both rooms also have to be open to the whole space: a room with a custom member list is refused, because binding it would give one audience access to the other's material. Direct messages cannot be connected.

Setting this up, and deciding what the agent may do once it answers, is covered in Reusable & personal agents.

A message can also be turned into a task. Pick one, choose a workflow, and an agent drafts a title, description and checklist for you to review — nothing reaches a board until you publish it. See turning a chat message into a task.

Chat next to the work

A chat room sits in the space it is about, so the conversation is one click from the boards, docs and feed it concerns — no alt-tabbing to a separate app to talk about the work you just left. This is the part a standalone chat tool can't do.

For a conversation that should follow you everywhere instead, including into the other Bookbag products, that is organization chat — the blue bubble in the bottom-right corner of every page.

Control who can chat

Organization admins can restrict who may use chat rooms at all: go to Organization → Members & access → Chat access. Useful when some members — external viewers, say — should read the workspace without messaging in it.

That setting governs chat rooms only. Access to organization chat is decided by membership of the organization at the Bookbag account, and Openbook does not filter it.

Plan limits

On the Free plan, messages in a chat room older than 30 days are hidden from view. They are never deleted — upgrade to Pro and the full history comes back, so long-running channels keep their complete archive. Organization chat is not subject to this: it is not Openbook's to limit.

Tips

• Prefer channels over DMs for anything a teammate might need later; DM answers get asked again next month.
• Use the organization chat bubble during reviews and planning — talking about the board while on the board beats pasting screenshots into a chat app.
• Anything the whole team must see belongs in a feed room, not a channel: chat is fast and scrolls away, the feed is deliberate and stays put.
• Moving off a separate chat license? Recreate only the channels people actually use — a migration is a good pruning opportunity.

FAQ

Can this replace Slack for us? For team chat, yes: channels, DMs, presence, typing indicators, and unread badges are all here — plus proximity to the actual work.

What is the floating chat bubble in the corner? That is organization chat, not a chat room. It is available on every page, shared with every Bookbag product, and its conversations are separate from any room's.

What happens to old messages on the Free plan? In a chat room, messages older than 30 days are hidden, not deleted. They return in full on Pro. Organization chat is unaffected.

Can we limit who's allowed to chat? For chat rooms, yes — org-level chat access control lives under Organization → Members & access → Chat access. For organization chat, access follows membership of the organization and is changed at your Bookbag account.