Text your agent
How to let a spouse or friend talk to your agent over a familiar chat surface (iMessage worked example). Surface vs brain vs tools: the agent holds the conversation; Minion is memory, secrets, packages, and jobs, not the chat buddy. Covers OpenClaw, Hermes Agent and Bezalel patterns, a simpler SMS path through a webhook, and email through the team inbox.
Text your agent
Minion is not a chat app. People message an agent through a chat or messaging service; that agent connects to Minion over MCP to use shared packages, memory, secrets, jobs, email and other tools.
The three parts
- Messaging surface: where the person writes, such as SMS, Discord or email.
- Agent host: receives the message, keeps the conversation and replies.
- Minion: provides the agent's shared capabilities over MCP.
The messaging service does not need a direct connection to Minion. The agent host can call Minion when it needs a tool or shared data, then reply on the same messaging surface.
SMS and iMessage
Minion has no built-in SMS or iMessage channel. For SMS, a messaging provider can POST inbound messages to a Minion inbound webhook . A saved package can validate the provider request and call its API to reply. Store the provider credential as a Minion secret, approve the provider host, and test with non-production data first.
iMessage requires a bridge or an agent host that already supports it. Minion does not provide a personal iMessage API or host an iMessage number.
Every organization has a Minion inbox at {team-slug}@inbox.minion.codes. A package can subscribe to email.message.received and process accepted messages. See Agent inbox . Treat message bodies as untrusted input and check sender authentication when the sender's identity matters.
Connect the agent
Connect the agent host to Minion using Connect your agent . Once connected, the agent can use Minion's search and execute tools. Keep provider credentials in Minion secrets or integrations, grant only the scopes the workflow needs, and require a person to approve external side effects when appropriate.