Topics
A topic turns the agent into a shared, multi-person workspace. Where a normal conversation is just you and the agent, a topic has a roster of participants and can hold several conversations under one umbrella — everyone in the topic can see and join every conversation inside it.
Use a topic when more than one person needs to work with the same agent on the same thing: a project channel, a team investigation, an on-call room, or a group chat driven from an IM platform.
Topic vs. conversation
| Conversation | Topic | |
|---|---|---|
| Participants | Just you | Many (you + invited members) |
| Contains | One message thread | One or more conversations |
| Sidebar | A standalone row | A group node with its conversations nested under it |
| Sandbox | Your personal sandbox | A shared sandbox (see The shared sandbox) |
A topic with only one participant behaves like a normal 1:1 chat until you add someone.
Creating a topic
There are three ways a topic comes into being. However it is created, the creator becomes its owner.
New Topic
Click New Topic in the sidebar. In the dialog, give it a title, invite workspace members, and choose the sandbox mode. CubePlex creates the topic with a first conversation and drops you into it.
Capture: The "New Topic" dialog with a title entered, two members selected, and the sandbox-mode choice visible.
Asset: /img/conversations/topic-create-dialog.png
Upgrade an existing conversation
Already deep in a 1:1 conversation that should become a group effort? Use Upgrade to topic from the conversation header. The existing conversation becomes the first conversation under a new topic, and you become its owner.
You cannot upgrade a conversation that is already part of a topic, or one that is wired to an IM bot, a scheduled task, or an event trigger — detach those first.
From an IM bot
When a bot is bound to a group chat in topic or shared routing mode, CubePlex creates a topic automatically the first time a message arrives in that chat. These IM-created topics carry the originating platform and channel as metadata. See IM Connectors.
The IM runner only drives topics that originated from IM. A topic you create in the web app cannot currently be answered from an IM channel.
Participants and roles
Every participant has one of two roles:
- Owner — the creator. Manages the roster, the title, and the topic's lifecycle.
- Member — can read and post in every conversation under the topic, and start new conversations in it.
| Action | Who can do it |
|---|---|
| Invite participants | Owner only |
| Leave the topic | Any participant (yourself) |
| Remove another participant | Owner only |
| Transfer ownership / change a role | Owner only |
| Rename the topic | Owner only |
| Pin / unpin the topic | Any participant |
| Archive the topic | Owner only |
| Start a new conversation in the topic | Any participant |
Invited people must already be members of the workspace — inviting them to a topic does not add them to the workspace or create an account. A topic is only visible to its participants; everyone else in the workspace cannot see it.
If an owner leaves or is removed, ownership automatically passes to the earliest-joined remaining participant, so a topic is never left ownerless.
Participant limit: a topic holds up to 20 participants by default. Topics created from a shared IM channel allow up to 100.
Capture: The topic members panel showing the participant list with the owner badge, the Invite button (owner view), and the Leave action.
Asset: /img/conversations/topic-members-panel.png
The shared sandbox
Because a topic is shared, its code-execution sandbox is shared too. You pick how that works when you create the topic, and it cannot be changed afterward — choose deliberately:
- Dedicated topic sandbox — CubePlex spins up a fresh sandbox that belongs to the topic. It gets its own isolated storage, separate from anyone's personal sandbox and from every other topic. Files from the conversation you started in are not carried over. This is the default for New Topic and the safer choice for a group.
- Reuse the creator's sandbox — the topic runs in the owner's personal sandbox. Files and environment carry over, which is convenient when you're upgrading your own conversation and want to keep its working files. The trade-off: every participant's code runs in the owner's environment, with access to whatever is in it. This is the default when you upgrade an existing conversation.
In "reuse the creator's sandbox" mode, other members' actions execute inside your personal sandbox. Only use it with people you'd trust with your own environment.
You can see and manage every sandbox you own — including a topic's dedicated sandbox — from the workspace Sandboxes settings tab.
Conversations inside a topic
A topic starts with one conversation, but any participant can open more — for example, one conversation per sub-task. All of them are visible to every participant and appear nested under the topic in the sidebar. There is no separate "topic page"; you work inside the topic's conversations just like any other chat.
Who sent each message. In a shared topic, every message is tagged with the participant who sent it, so you can tell contributors apart at a glance, and the agent is told who is speaking so it can keep track. In a plain 1:1 chat this tag is hidden — there's only you. When you upgrade a 1:1 conversation into a topic, messages you send from then on carry your name, so the new participants can see who said what.
Ordering, pinning, and archiving
- Ordering. Topics and standalone conversations share one sidebar list, ordered by most recent activity. A topic floats up whenever any conversation inside it gets a new message.
- Pinning. Any participant can pin a topic to keep it at the top. Pinning is shared — it affects the topic's position for everyone. (Pinning an individual conversation lifts just that conversation to the top, even out of its topic.)
- Archiving. An owner can archive a topic from its sidebar menu. Archived topics disappear from the sidebar for all participants. Individual members who just want out can leave the topic from the members panel instead.
Topics as automation destinations
A scheduled task can target a topic, so a recurring run posts into a shared group instead of a private conversation. See Scheduled Tasks.
Tips
- Pick the sandbox mode on purpose. It is the one topic setting you can't change later. Default to a dedicated sandbox unless you specifically need the creator's files.
- Upgrade, don't recreate. If a 1:1 chat grows into team work, upgrade it — you keep the history and (optionally) the working files.
- Use separate conversations for separate threads. One topic, many conversations keeps a group's parallel workstreams readable instead of interleaved in a single thread.