Cross-Org Connections (Team Chat Lane C)

The shared promise. Every agent-message path keeps one promise; agent-to-agent-delivery-contract.md states it once and says where each path keeps it.

What it is

Connect with any Omniscio user by email — a coworker in the same workspace OR someone in a completely different organization — to start a 1:1 DM. The connection forms ONLY when the recipient approves.

Where to find it

Everything starts in Team Chat, which has a Connections section in its sidebar; the Connect by Email dialog opens from there. A request you receive shows up in that same sidebar section and as a card in your Inbox, where you accept or decline it. Once a connection exists, its conversation sits in the Team Chat sidebar with your other chats. Your own discoverability switch is on your Team Chat self-profile popover — the avatar strip in the sidebar — so you can stop receiving connection requests without leaving Team Chat.

How it behaves

How it works

1. Request — type a person's exact sign-in email in the Connect by Email dialog (opened from the Team Chat sidebar's Connections section). The request is sent via the globalAuthProfile Cloud Function (requestConnection action).
2. Approval — the recipient sees a pending request in their Team Chat sidebar (Connections section) AND as an Inbox item (see connection-request-inbox.md). They can Accept (creates the connection and opens the DM) or Decline (deletes the pending doc so a future re-request starts clean).
3. Messaging — once accepted, both users can message each other in a 1:1 DM that lives in a top-level connections/{connId} collection, separate from any org's channels. Messages use the same frozen schema as org channels. Reactions, pins, and threads all work on connection DMs (parity with org channels).

For agents

Key design decisions

• Separate top-level collection — connections can't nest under any one org (they cross tenant boundaries), so connections/{connId} is a new top-level Firestore surface gated purely on participation. It never weakens the org tenant wall.
• Deterministic ID — connId = conn_<uidA>__<uidB> with sorted uids, so A→B and B→A resolve to the same doc. Mutual requests auto-accept.
• Anti-enumeration — a request for a non-existent email, an opted-out user, or a disabled account ALL return { status: 'requested' } so callers can't probe which emails are real accounts (invariant C1).
• Server-only lookups — the email→uid resolution and privacy check happen server-side in the Cloud Function (Admin SDK). A client never sees a uid it doesn't already have a relationship with (invariant C2).

Privacy controls

Each user has an acceptsConnections field on their users/{uid} doc — default-on (absent = accepts; only an explicit false opts out). The toggle lives in the user's Team Chat self-profile popover (the avatar strip in the sidebar). It is NOT an AppSettings field and is NOT in the admin-only Workspace settings dialog — every member can control their own discoverability.

CLI routes

• POST /team-chat/connections — request a connection by email.
• POST /team-chat/connections/:id/respond — accept or decline a pending request.

Renderer components

• ConnectByEmailDialog — the email input + request dialog.
• ConnectionsSection — the sidebar list of accepted + pending connections.
• ConnectionMessageView — the DM conversation view for a connection.
• ConnectionPrivacyToggle — the opt-in/opt-out toggle (optimistic, identity-gated interactivity).
• ConnectionRequestDetailPane — the inbox approval pane with Accept/Decline buttons.

Agent message attribution

Agent-sent connection DMs use the same authoredByAgent flag as org channel messages. The cross-org connection DM relay stamps this unconditionally, so an agent DM always renders as "<Name>'s agent" (parity reached 2026-08-11).

Related

The parent feature — the org channels and the sidebar this lane lives in — is on the Team Chat page. How a pending request is presented in the unified queue is on Connection Request Inbox Items, and the queue itself is described on the Inbox Overview page.

Related pages

• Team Chat — the parent feature.
• Connection Request Inbox Items — how requests surface in the unified Inbox.

Contract: team-chat-connections-contract.md (C1-C13).