Vibes in a group chat: who it acts as
Add Vibes to an iMessage group chat and the chat gets its own identity. The apps made there belong to the group, linked members ask for changes, and your personal settings and memory stay in your own chat with Vibes. Who Vibes acts as in each case, on one page.
You can text Vibes on your own, and you can add it to a group. Group
chats run on iMessage today: add [email protected] to the chat where your
friends plan game night, ask for a poll, and a poll arrives as a link in the
thread. This page covers the part worth knowing before you invite it: who
Vibes acts as in a group, and what it can reach there.
The group is its own identity
A group chat with Vibes gets an identity of its own, with its own handle. Nobody signs in as it, and it is separate from every member's account. What the group makes belongs to the group, under the group's own name, and the group's memory lives with the group.
That keeps two things apart that are easy to blur. Your account is yours: your apps, your settings, your memory, your credits. The group is the group's: the apps made in that chat and the things that chat has asked for.
Say four friends plan a camping trip in one chat. Someone asks for a packing list. The list is the group's app. All four can ask for changes to it, and it sits under the group's handle, apart from each person's own apps.
Who Vibes acts as
| Where it is working | Who it acts as |
|---|---|
| An app the group made | The group |
| An app the group added | The linked member who asked, or the group itself, under that app's own rules |
| Any other app, yours included | The linked member who asked, under that app's own rules |
| Your one-to-one chat with Vibes | You |
When Vibes acts as the member who asked, it can do what that member could do on the web, inside that app's access rules, and nothing more. If the app is yours, that includes what you can do as its owner. If it is someone else's, you are a visitor there and so is Vibes. Your apps in a group chat has examples.
In an app the group added, Vibes chooses per action. It writes as the member
where the app cares who acted, such as a vote, a claim or an RSVP, and as the
group for something the whole chat shares, such as a setting or an update the
app sends on its own. The group is always an ordinary user of an app it
added: the app's access.js decides what the group can read and write, and
the group is never the app's owner.
Take a book club that adds a voting app. "Vibes, I vote for the Le Guin" is recorded as your vote. "Vibes, set our meeting night to Thursday" is saved as the group's.
What members can do
Members who have linked their phone to a Vibes account can ask for changes to the group's apps, and any of them can edit and publish. The group's apps change through the chat, in words.
Taking one of the group's apps down takes two people. One linked member asks, and a 👍 from a different linked member within the hour does it.
Linking is a short step, covered in Texting Vibes from any phone. A member who hasn't linked yet gets a sign-in link from Vibes, privately. Link within half an hour and the request runs; after that, ask again.
When another member has offered to cover the chat's credits, Vibes answers an unlinked member right away. Until they link it can't act as them in any app, so in an app the group added it works as the group.
What stays in your own chat
- Your settings, your memory, and the code and look of your apps. They stay in your one-to-one chat with Vibes. "Make me a copy" remixes a group app into your own handle.
- Sign-in links, link codes and private app links. These always come to you one to one.
- Credits and sign-ins. Both stay one to one.
One thing does cross over, and only when you ask: what you have Vibes read from one of your apps in the group is said in the group. "Vibes, what's on my reading list?" in the book club's chat answers there, for everyone.
Apps the group adds
A group can use an app someone else made. A member asks in a sentence, "vibes,
add Meetup Keeper to this chat", and "vibes, remove Meetup Keeper" takes it
out while the group's records in it stay. Adding an app grants it nothing
extra: that app's own access.js still decides every read and write, whether
Vibes is acting as a member or as the group.
An added app can post in the chat when it has something to say, such as a reminder the day before a meetup. A bare "STOP" after one of its posts pauses that app for the whole chat. Reply "keep" and a linked member's yes turns it back on.
See what the chat is connected to
Text "vibes settings" in the group and Vibes sends back the chat's own page. It lists every app the group added, who added it, whether it's paused, and what it can do in the chat. Asking "vibes, what is this chat connected to?" gets the same answer in the thread. More in What your group chat is connected to.
Text "privacy" to read what Vibes reads and keeps, and "help" for the chat's commands.
Start a fresh chat, or start over
- "vibes new chat" starts a fresh conversation with Vibes and keeps the group's handle, its apps and the apps it added.
- "vibes forget" moves the group to a fresh identity and handle, after a member answers "Forget everything?" with a yes.
Go deeper
- A small app with one job is the safest kind to trust: why a group chat is where scope you can read matters most.
- Build an agent: what Vibes can do for you by text.
- Read an app's trail: open the source, rules and
data of any app the group uses, as far as that app's settings and its
access.jsallow. - Who can see what: the access model: the rules every app runs under, in a group or out of one.