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Ingress Plane

What it does​

The ingress plane is the entry point for all messages. It accepts incoming communication from external channels — Telegram, Slack, a REST API, or any other adapter — and normalizes them into a consistent internal format before forwarding to the orchestration plane.

Responsibilities​

  • Receive — accept messages from external channels via webhooks or polling
  • Authenticate — verify the sender's identity (Telegram user ID, Slack user ID, API key, etc.)
  • Normalize — convert channel-specific message formats into the internal IncomingMessage schema
  • Route — send the normalized message to the orchestrator for processing
  • Reply — accept the orchestrator's response and deliver it back through the correct channel

Channel adapters​

Each supported channel has its own adapter — a thin translation layer that handles the specifics of that channel's API:

AdapterProtocolNotes
TelegramWebhook (HTTP POST)Message types: text, voice, documents
SlackEvents APISlash commands and direct messages
HTTP APIRESTProgrammatic access

Adapters are responsible for channel-specific concerns only. They don't make decisions about what to do with a message — that's the orchestrator's job.

The normalized message​

After an adapter processes a raw message, it emits a normalized structure that includes:

  • Actor — who sent the message (user ID, channel, trust level)
  • Content — the message text or media
  • Session ID — the conversation context
  • Channel metadata — source adapter, timestamp, message ID

This normalization means the orchestration plane doesn't need to know whether a message came from Telegram or Slack — it sees the same structure regardless.

Ingress security​

The ingress plane is the first line of defense against:

  • Unauthenticated requests — messages without valid authentication are rejected before reaching the orchestrator
  • Oversized payloads — message size is bounded to prevent abuse
  • Invalid formats — malformed messages are rejected at the adapter level

Importantly, the ingress plane does not trust the content of messages. The fact that a message arrived from an authenticated Telegram user doesn't mean the message's content is trustworthy. Content trust is evaluated at a different layer.