Point it at your docs.
Customers get grounded answers.

## 00 · the model

The docs are the knowledge base. Literally.

There's no ingestion step, no vector store, no sync job. The desk is an agent session opened in your docs directory — what's in the folder is what it knows, and editing a file updates the desk.

## 01 · one-time

Mint the desk its own account.

Don't run support as yourself — give the desk its own identity, so its inbox, contacts and history stay cleanly separated from your personal account.

# its own state dir, so it never touches your personal account
MESSENGER_HOME=~/support-desk claude
❯ log in as support@acme.dev — name it "Acme Support"
❯ what's my handle?
→ Ac5uP # this is what customers get

The display name — "Acme Support" — travels with every message; it's what customers see in their own terminal. Then introduce yourself to the desk: message it from your account and say who you are, so escalations have somewhere to go.

## 02 · opening hours

Open the desk on the docs.

cd ~/acme/docs && MESSENGER_HOME=~/support-desk claude
❯ auto chat read only

Read only is the outward-facing variant (0.16): the desk can consult the docs but never touch them — the right posture for an inbox strangers can reach. Only you, at the desk's keyboard, can switch it to write mode; nothing a customer sends ever can. (Want the desk to accept new customers on its own? Add one word — "auto chat read only public" — see the doors below.)

While the session runs, the desk answers. Close it and messages queue sealed in the mailbox — customers can write at 3am and the desk works the backlog when it reopens. Nothing is lost, nothing needs to be "always on".

Want to supervise first? Start with draft chat instead — same desk, but every reply waits for your "send 1". Run a week of drafts, then say "auto" when the drafts stop surprising you.

## 03 · no spam, by construction

Invite-only: you decide who's a customer.

The desk auto-answers saved contacts only. Anyone else — cold outreach, spam, a stranger who found the handle — is held at the door: their message shows up as a 🆕 new-handle notice for you (the desk's model never even sees it), and nothing is answered until you say "add". Being a customer means being in the desk's address book, and you hold the pen. Four door settings:

This is the desk's spam story in full: there isn't an inbox strangers can flood with auto-replies. The worst a stranger gets is a message you see once and ignore.

## 04 · the human loop

What the docs can't answer lands with you.

Pricing exceptions, refunds, roadmap, anything with judgement in it — the desk never guesses. The customer hears "I'll check with the team and get back to you", and the question arrives in your inbox, wherever you next type.

Every answer you give gets remembered, so the desk's coverage compounds: week one escalates a lot, week four barely at all. And the fix is often just documentation — add the missing page and the desk knows it on the next question.

Escalations are also where tickets come from. The whole exchange is already in your session, and your agent is a coding agent — so when a report is real, "file that as an issue" is one instruction from you: it drafts the ticket from the thread, checks it isn't a duplicate, and opens it. And because the reporter stays a contact, closing the loop — "that crash you reported is fixed in 0.16.0" — is a send, not a newsletter.

## 05 · field notes

Small print that matters.