> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.watx.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Core concepts

> The vocabulary Watx uses — workspaces, members, contacts, conversations, channels, templates, and the difference between automations, flows and AI agents.

Everything in these docs is built out of a small number of ideas. This page
defines them once so the rest can be brief.

## Workspace

A **workspace** is one business's tenant. Every contact, conversation, template,
automation and connected integration belongs to exactly one workspace, and no
workspace can see another's data.

A single login can belong to several workspaces with a different role in each,
and switches between them from the first row of the sidebar. See
[Workspaces](/getting-started/workspaces).

## Members and roles

A **member** is a person in a workspace. There are four roles, from most to
least privileged:

| Role       | In short                                                                   |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Owner**  | The one who pays. Everything an admin can do, plus billing and ownership.  |
| **Admin**  | Runs the workspace: members, settings, integrations, agents.               |
| **Agent**  | Works the product: inbox, contacts, deals, broadcasts, automations, flows. |
| **Viewer** | Read-only across the app.                                                  |

There is exactly one owner per workspace. Full capability table:
[Members and roles](/settings/members-and-roles).

<Note>
  The role named **Agent** is a person. An **AI agent** is software. These docs
  always spell out "the Agent role" when the human is meant.
</Note>

## Contact

A **contact** is one person, held once no matter how many channels they use.
Phone numbers are stored in canonical international form (`+919791766444`), so
the same person who DMs you on Instagram and later messages your WhatsApp number
is one record with one history.

Contacts carry built-in fields (name, phone, company, address), any **custom
fields** your workspace defines, **tags**, and membership of **segments**. See
[Contacts](/contacts/overview).

## Conversation

A **conversation** is a thread between your workspace and one contact on one
channel. It has a status — open or closed — an optional assignee, and it is what
the Inbox shows. Messages belong to a conversation.

A contact can therefore have more than one conversation: a WhatsApp thread and
an Instagram thread are separate conversations against the same contact.

## Channel

A channel is where a conversation arrived. There are exactly three:
`whatsapp`, `instagram` and `web`.

They are not interchangeable, and the differences matter when you build
anything:

|                                                     | WhatsApp | Instagram          | Website   |
| --------------------------------------------------- | -------- | ------------------ | --------- |
| Free-reply window after the customer's last message | 24 hours | 24 hours           | No window |
| Templates                                           | Yes      | No                 | No        |
| Broadcasts                                          | Yes      | No                 | No        |
| Reply buttons                                       | Yes      | Yes                | Yes       |
| Interactive lists                                   | Yes      | No                 | Yes       |
| Product catalogue messages                          | Yes      | No                 | No        |
| Delivery receipts                                   | Yes      | Read receipts only | Yes       |
| Flows (the Watx chatbot builder)                    | Yes      | No                 | No        |
| Automations                                         | Yes      | Yes                | Yes       |

Broadcasts need templates to be compliant, which is why only WhatsApp has them.
A website visitor is only reachable while their tab is open, so there is no
audience to bulk-send to at all.

## Template and the 24-hour window

A **template** is a message whose wording Meta has approved in advance. It is
the only thing that will send on WhatsApp once the conversation's window has
closed.

The rule: once a customer messages your business, you have **24 hours** to reply
with anything — text, media, interactive messages. After that, a free-form
message is refused by Meta and only an approved template will go out. Watx
applies the same rule everywhere it sends: the inbox composer, broadcasts,
automations, flows, payment links and sales documents all check it before
sending.

Instagram has a 24-hour reply window too, and no template mechanism at all — so
once it closes, the honest answer is to wait for the customer. The website
widget has no window: Watx is the transport, so nobody imposes one.

See [Message templates](/whatsapp/templates) and [The 24-hour
window](/whatsapp/messaging-window).

## Automations, flows and agents

Three different things do work without a human typing. Choosing between them is
the most common early question.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Automation — a trigger and a sequence of steps">
    An **automation** fires on an event (a message arrives, a form is submitted,
    an order is placed, a payment is received) and runs a sequence of steps. A
    branching step owns a `yes` and a `no` sequence, so it is a tree rather than
    a free graph.

    Automations are **channel-agnostic**: one automation answers a WhatsApp
    message and an Instagram DM without being written twice. Anything that must
    work off WhatsApp belongs here.

    See [Automations](/automations/overview).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Flow — a conversational graph, WhatsApp only">
    A **flow** is a graph of typed nodes run against one conversation at a time:
    ask a question, branch on the answer, send a list, collect a payment, hand
    off to a human. It is the chatbot builder.

    Flows are **WhatsApp only**, because they send lists, templates and
    catalogue products — none of which exist on the other channels. One contact
    can have only one active flow run at a time.

    See [Flows](/flows/overview).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="AI agent — a configured model that answers in its own words">
    An **AI agent** reads the thread and writes a reply. You configure its
    persona, voice, ground rules, the documents it may read and the skills it
    may use; it is not a decision tree.

    A workspace can run several agents and route between them by channel and
    priority. An agent can draft replies for a human to send, or answer
    automatically.

    See [AI agents](/ai-agents/overview).
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

<Tip>
  A rough rule: **fixed wording on a fixed trigger** is an automation, **a
  scripted conversation with choices** is a flow, and **an open question you
  cannot enumerate** is an agent. They compose — a flow can hand off to an
  agent, and an automation can start a flow.
</Tip>

## Segment and tag

A **tag** is a fact about one person ("vip"). A **segment** is a named audience
with a purpose ("March webinar attendees") — either an explicit list or a saved
filter that recomputes itself. Broadcasts, automations and flows all take
segments as audiences. See [Segments](/contacts/segments).

## Plan and entitlement

A workspace runs on one **plan**, which sets its limits: contacts, messages per
month, broadcasts per month, flows, team members, storage and AI agents. Limits
are checked before an action, not after.

A workspace whose subscription has lapsed keeps all its data but stops being
able to send and create. See [Plans and
billing](/getting-started/plans-and-billing).