Competitive intelligence
Watch a competitor's blog or changelog feed and have an employee summarize every new post so you find out about a launch or price change the day it happens, not weeks later when someone mentions it.
RSS Feed Channel
The RSS Feed Channel is on our roadmap. Once it ships, you will point an AI employee at any RSS or Atom feed, blog, changelog, or news source, and it will wake the moment a new item is published. No polling by hand, no inbox full of alerts you have to triage yourself.
Most teams already watch a handful of feeds that matter to their business: a competitor's blog, an industry newsletter that publishes via RSS, a vendor's changelog, a regulator's bulletin page. Right now that means someone opens a reader, scans new entries, and decides by hand what deserves a reaction. The RSS Feed Channel is built to remove that middle step entirely.
The idea is simple: give an AI employee a feed URL, and it treats new entries the same way it treats a message in Slack or an email in its inbox, as a reason to wake up and act. A new post lands, the employee reads it, and it does whatever its skills allow next: summarize it, draft a reply, log it to the work journal, alert you, or kick off a workflow that depends on that source. You describe what should happen when something new shows up; the channel is what makes sure the employee actually sees it the moment it does.
What makes this different from stitching together an RSS-to-Slack bot or a generic automation recipe is that the trigger and the actor are the same employee. A typical feed-watching integration can only forward a link; it has no judgment about whether the new item matters, and no ability to act on it beyond a notification. An AI employee wired to a feed can read the full entry, decide if it is relevant, and carry out the next step itself, so a single channel replaces both the watcher and the person who used to read the alert and do something about it.
The RSS Feed Channel is not available yet. This page describes the plan so you know what to expect and can tell us if your use case needs something specific once it lands.
If the words RSS and Atom mean nothing to you, that is fine, and it does not stop this being useful. A feed is simply a plain, machine-readable list of a site's newest posts that the site publishes for exactly this purpose. Most blogs, changelogs, press pages, job boards, and news sites publish one whether or not they advertise it, which is why a feed-based channel covers so much ground without anyone building a site-by-site integration.
The point is not that you get alerted. It is that something gets done. An alert still leaves the reading, the judging, and the acting to you, which is the part that gets dropped on a busy week. Pointing an employee at a feed moves all three of those to someone whose job it is, and you only hear about the entries that turned into something worth your attention.
Built for feeds you already track by hand
Company blogs, product changelogs, press pages, job boards, and most news sites publish an RSS or Atom feed even when there is no obvious subscribe button. That makes this channel useful anywhere you currently rely on a person remembering to check a page, which is exactly the kind of task that gets skipped when someone is busy or on leave.
The plan is to support any standard feed URL rather than a curated list of named sources, so the channel works for a competitor's changelog just as well as an internal one, without waiting on us to add a specific integration for each site.
One employee, not a shared alert list
A feed connects to a specific AI employee the way a mailbox or a Slack channel does, not to a generic company-wide alert. That means the response to a new entry is shaped by that employee's role, skills, and duties, so a competitive-intelligence employee and a compliance-monitoring employee can watch related feeds and produce completely different output, instead of everyone getting the same forwarded link.
Watching a page today, before this ships
You do not have to wait to get most of this benefit. An employee can already be put on a recurring schedule, and it can already read a web page with its research tool, so a routine that checks a competitor's blog every morning and reports back is something you can set up now. It is a poll rather than a trigger, so it runs on your cadence rather than the moment a post appears.
What the RSS Feed Channel adds on top is precision and quiet. Because a feed states exactly which entries are new, the employee reacts to genuinely new items instead of re-reading the same page and working out what changed. That means fewer wasted runs, no duplicate summaries of the same post, and a reaction that lands close to publication rather than at the next scheduled check.
How It Works
One feed URL, one employee watching it continuously
You will add a feed by giving an employee its URL, the same way you connect a mailbox or a Slack workspace today. From that point the channel checks the feed on a schedule and compares what it finds against what it has already seen, so the employee only ever reacts to genuinely new entries, never a reprocessed backlog.
Each new entry becomes a normal turn for the employee: it can read the full item, apply whatever skills and duties it has been given, and use its usual tools to summarize, translate, cross-reference against other data, or hand off to a teammate. Because it is the same execution path as every other channel, anything an employee can already do in a chat or a scheduled run, it will be able to do in response to a feed update, without special-casing this trigger.
What you would write down is the instruction, not the plumbing. You tell the employee what to watch for and what to do about it in ordinary language, the same way you would brief a person: flag anything about pricing, skip the hiring posts, summarise a release in three lines, tell me directly if a security note lands. The channel's only job is making sure the employee sees each new item; what counts as important stays your call, written in your own words.
Use Cases
Vendor and dependency changelogs
Point an employee at the release feed for a critical vendor or open-source dependency you rely on, and let it flag breaking changes or security notes as soon as they are published.
Industry and regulatory monitoring
Follow a regulator's bulletin feed or an industry publication and have an employee draft a plain-language summary the moment something relevant to your business is posted.
Your own content, watched for you
Point an employee at your own blog or changelog feed and let each new post kick off the follow-up work that usually gets skipped: a social caption, a short newsletter blurb, a note to the customers who asked for that exact thing. Publishing becomes the trigger instead of another item on your list.
Comparison
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| You remember to open a reader and scan for anything new, or you simply do not. | Arriving: an employee watches the feed continuously and only reacts when an entry is genuinely new. |
| A feed-to-chat bot forwards a link and leaves all the reading to you. | Arriving: the employee reads the entry, decides whether it matters, and does the next step itself. |
| Everyone gets the same forwarded alert whatever their job is. | Arriving: each feed points at one employee, so the response is shaped by that employee's role and duties. |
| A competitor's launch reaches you weeks later, when somebody happens to mention it. | Arriving: it reaches the employee watching for it on the day it is published. |
FAQ
Is the RSS Feed Channel available now?
Not yet. It is on our roadmap and this page describes the plan for it. We will update this guide the moment it ships, and existing channels like Mailbox, Slack, and Web Chat already work the same way this one is designed to.
Will it work with any RSS or Atom feed, or only specific sites?
The intent is to support any standard RSS or Atom feed URL, not a fixed list of approved sources, so it can cover a competitor's blog, a vendor changelog, or an internal feed equally.
What will an AI employee actually do when a feed updates?
Whatever its skills and duties allow. A new entry becomes a normal task for the employee, so it can summarize the item, log it, alert you, or trigger a downstream workflow, the same way it would react to a new chat message or email today.
Can I connect more than one feed to the same employee?
We have not finalized the exact configuration, but the design goal is to let an employee watch multiple feeds relevant to its role, the same way it can already be reached through several channels at once.
What is an RSS feed, in plain English?
An RSS feed is a plain, machine-readable list of a website's newest posts that the site publishes on purpose so software can follow it. Atom is the same idea in a slightly different format. Most blogs, changelogs, press pages, and news sites publish one even when there is no visible subscribe button anywhere on the page.
How can I have an AI employee watch a website before this channel ships?
Give the employee a recurring schedule and let it read the page with its web research tool, which both work today. That is a poll rather than a trigger, so it runs on the cadence you set instead of the instant a post appears, but it covers most of the same ground.
Will a quiet feed still cost me anything?
The design goal is that an employee only wakes for a genuinely new entry, so a feed that publishes nothing costs nothing. Checking whether a feed changed is not employee work; reading an entry and acting on it is, and that is metered the same way as any other work the employee does.
Can I tell the employee to ignore most of what a feed publishes?
Yes, that is the intended way to use it. You write the instruction in plain language, for example flag anything about pricing and skip the hiring posts, and the employee applies that judgement to each new entry instead of forwarding everything it sees.
Where RSS Feed Channel fits
RSS Feed Channel is part of Ways you talk to them.
Chat in the app with live reasoning, speak to your AI voice agent over a call, message on Slack or WhatsApp, send an email, or embed a widget on your website. Every channel connects to the same AI agent with the same memory and capabilities. Switch channels mid-conversation and your employee picks up right where you left off.
- Ways you talk to them: Every channel. One conversation.
Read the guide
More in Channels
- Web Chat: Chat with any AI employee directly in the workspace, with a streaming reply, a live execution timeline showing what it is reading, thinking, and doing, and inline approve/reject buttons when it needs a sensitive action confirmed. It is the default channel: nothing to configure, works on desktop or mobile, and every conversation persists so you can pick it back up later.
- Voice Calls: Voice Calls is a planned channel for speaking to an AI employee out loud and hearing it reply in real time, instead of typing. It is not available yet: there is no voice button in the workspace today, and the feature is paused while the underlying voice flow is redesigned. When it ships, a voice call will run through the same skills, tools, and memory as a typed conversation.
- Connect an Email Provider: Point your own SendGrid, Mailgun, or Postmark inbound-parse webhook at a tenant-scoped endpoint and every email that lands there gets turned into work for an employee. Forward support requests, sales inquiries, or internal approval emails and the employee reads the sender, subject, and body, then acts on it in the background. You get a 202 response immediately; there's no waiting on the request.
- Personal Mailbox: Every employee gets its own email address on the shared Sistava domain the moment you hire it, no setup. Email it directly, CC it on a thread with other people, or forward something over, and it reads and replies within seconds. Free to send from, with a monthly cap by plan. Control the shared employee signature in Company Profile, or connect your own Gmail or Outlook when you want it sending as you, with no cap.
- Send from Gmail or Outlook: The built-in employee address is free and always on, but it sends as the employee, not as you. Connect your own Gmail or Outlook instead and an employee sends and replies from your real address, in your name, with no monthly sending cap on any plan.
- Talk to Your Employee on Video: In-App Video is a planned channel for live, face to face video calls with an AI employee, camera and microphone, directly inside the workspace. It has no working implementation today: it appears in Settings > Technical > Channels as a Coming soon placeholder only. Once it ships, it is meant to run on the same execution pipeline as every other channel, so the employee keeps its skills, tools, training, and conversation memory on a video call. If you need an employee in a live call today, it can already join a Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams meeting as a participant, which is a different capability and available now.
- Chat Widget: The Chat Widget will let you embed an AI employee directly on your public website so visitors can ask questions and get answers without leaving the page. It is on the roadmap and is not available to configure yet: today it appears in Settings > Technical > Channels as a Coming soon placeholder with no setup, embed snippet, or Manage action.
- SMS: SMS is a planned channel for reaching an AI employee by ordinary text message, with no app to install. It is on the roadmap and not available today: there is no SMS number, no inbound texting, and no way to turn it on yet. Until it ships, use web chat or Telegram for mobile access from any phone.
- WhatsApp: WhatsApp is a planned messaging channel for talking with an AI employee from your phone. It is not connected yet: the card shows as coming soon and cannot be set up today. When it ships, it will carry the same employee memory, skills, and guardrails as web chat, Telegram, Slack, and the mailbox. Telegram and Slack are live now and give you the same access from a phone, so nothing you set up today has to be rebuilt when WhatsApp arrives.
- Discord: Discord is a planned channel for bringing an AI employee into the servers and direct messages your community already uses. It will connect the same way Slack does today: authorize a bot through OAuth, then map it to one employee. It is not available to connect yet, so no Discord traffic reaches an employee until it ships. Slack, Telegram, each employee's own email address, and web chat cover the same job in the meantime.
- Calendar Invites: Add your employee's personal address as a guest on any Google, Outlook, or Apple calendar event and they show up for the meeting automatically, no RSVP or extra app on your side. Once the meeting starts, the employee joins the Meet, Zoom, or Teams call, listens, speaks when addressed, and writes a summary afterward. There is nothing to switch on for the invite itself, just turn on the Meeting Attender tool for that employee once.
- Slack Channel: Bring your AI employee into Slack as a real bot user your team can mention, DM, or trigger with a slash command. Every reply lands in the same thread, and memory, tasks, skills, and tools stay shared with web chat, so a conversation started on Slack continues anywhere else. You approve or reject requests right from Slack, and the bot only speaks when mentioned, DM'd, or already in a thread.