Sharing and joining a room

Share a sessionCopy Anchor Link

There are three ways to let people reach your host, chosen in the client: F2 → Session → Who can join.

With Over the internet the host connects out to the relay and so does every guest — nobody opens a port, which is what makes it work from a home network. The relay only routes frames: it never decides permissions and never stores content.

Through a tunnelCopy Anchor Link

A tunnel gives your host a public address without a server of your own, with one command:

plural --tunnel cloudflared   # needs the cloudflared program, no account; address changes each start
plural --tunnel ngrok         # needs the ngrok program and a free account

The first lines of the conversation show an invite whose link carries the tunnel address (wss://…); when you quit, the tunnel stops with the host. The tunnel provider terminates TLS, so it can read the traffic — trust it like you would a relay — and your host port is reachable from the internet while it is up. Share the link only with the people you mean, and end it with /invite revoke if it leaks.

Join a sessionCopy Anchor Link

plural join "ws://host:7777/r_…?invite=…" --name alia

Let people inCopy Anchor Link

The link at the top of the conversation is the room link. It is permanent: it never expires, it works for any number of people and it stays the same when you resume the session (while the address of your host stays the same). You can send it at any time.

Anyone who opens it waits on a screen that says the host has to let them in. You get a card in the list of things that wait for you, with their name and the program they use, and a bell if you have it on:

Until you answer they see nothing of the room. A request that nobody answers lapses after two minutes, at most five people can wait at once, and a room holds twenty people. After you let someone in they come back on their own for 24 hours without asking again.

The same choice is in F2 → Session → People who use the room link. A host started by a script can use --admission open (or PLURAL_ADMISSION=open).

Someone who joined by a one-time invite or who is already in, with a saved token, is never asked.

A teammate can also join from a browser: open the web client, paste the link and type a name. The web client shows the same session, approvals and queue as the terminal. A page served over https can only reach a host through a relay with wss://; over plain ws:// serve the web client over http on the same network.

Talking to the teamCopy Anchor Link

Not everything you type is for the agent. Two forms stay between people, and the agent never receives them:

Typing @ lists the people in the room, tab completes the name. A tag inside a team message (/team @alia look at this) is read by everyone and also alerts Alia. An @ that names no one in the room, such as @src/app.ts, is still a prompt for the agent.

The person you write to hears the terminal bell and sees a short message at the top right. The browser plays a short sound and marks the tab title when the page is in the background. Turn the bell off in F2 → Session → Bell on mentions.

Participants and the host can write; viewers can read the team chat but cannot write and cannot be written to privately. Messages are kept in the session log, so a person who was away finds them on return, and a late joiner sees the team chat but not what was private.