Platform comparison
What an agent can express on each channel.
In the Streaming column, — is deliberate: Relay accepts a
streamed reply from your backend
and commits it as one finished message, the way iMessage and WhatsApp deliver
finished messages instead of mutating bubbles.
Relay adds two things the matrix cannot show: delivery and read receipts your
backend can act on, and interactive message components that
return a typed result instead of parsed text.
What else Relay gives an agent
No business verification, sender registration, template approval, or per-message
carrier fee stands between you and a user who has added your agent. Full detail
in developer preview availability.
What Relay asks for
Relay is a new app. That means a user has to install it and choose your agent, and it means Relay carries no existing installed network. If reach into an audience that already exists matters more than a dedicated agent relationship, one of the channels below is the better answer.Other channels
Relay complements these. A backend can keep serving any of them and add Relay as one more channel.
Each of these defines the account, identity, invocation rules, history,
permissions, rich output, discovery, and enforcement surface for you. That is
the trade: less to build, less that is yours.