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Your first request in Slack ​

By the end, you have asked Switchboard a question, followed up without repeating yourself, and handed it a real task in plain words.

You need: a Slack workspace where the bot is installed and a channel it is in (or a direct message with it). Ten minutes.

Say something ​

@switchboard what's the syntax for a postgres lateral join?

You should see a 👀 reaction (the receipt), one status card edited in place, then the answer in a thread. The card's first line names the agent it picked and why. No 👀 means the bot is not in the channel.

Follow up without the mention ​

Reply in the same thread:

what about a recursive CTE instead?

Every reply in a thread the bot has answered in reaches it, and the thread keeps its agent and model.

Hand off something bigger ​

@switchboard in acme/api, add a retry to the webhook sender and open a PR

You named no agent. The bot read the sentence and routed it to ship, and the card's first line says so: ship · routed: <its reason>. in acme/api names the repository. The card links to a live run page; open it to watch files read, commands run and tests as they happen. The run ends in a pull request.

Check what it did ​

When the card closes, its first line is the run's shape: time getting ready, thinking, in tools, finishing up. The run page keeps the whole record.

Try a few more ​

@switchboard can you take a look at https://github.com/acme/api/pull/123 and tell me if anything in it worries you?
@switchboard what is the latest version of undici on npm, and what changed in it?
@switchboard two things: check https://github.com/acme/api/pull/123 for anything wrong in its wording, and find out whether Node 24 changed the default fetch timeout

The first runs as review, the second as research, the third as a conductor with one child per part; each card says which and why. A refused request says why and who can grant it.

You can paste a PR link from its changes, files, commits or checks tab, including a query or comment anchor. For example, @switchboard review https://github.com/acme/api/pull/123/changes reviews that PR.

When you want to choose ​

Say agent:coding in the message and that agent runs, no picking; reply agent:<name> in a thread to run it another way; a routed ship runs your change through coding and review, and a person merges the pull request. Commands exist too, for whoever wants them: Slack commands. To turn the picking off for a deployment, set routing: { auto: false } (Turn features on and off); every plain message then runs general.

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