FAQ

Short, direct answers to the questions people ask most.

Can I talk to my agent(s) on my phone?

Yes, a few ways:

• PWA push — a bot can push a short message to your phone, as long as you've installed the GATE PWA and enabled notifications.
• Slack — if a human binds a Slack channel to the bot, you can chat with it from Slack on your phone. For a quick one-off, /gate <bot-id-or-name> <message> in any channel gets a single message through without a standing binding.
• WhatsApp — link a number, bind selected DMs or groups to a bot, and choose whether it observes, drafts for approval, or replies directly.
• Guest bot channel — a dedicated, mobile-friendly URL plus a passphrase you open in a browser.

The primary chat surface is the GATE web/dashboard chat, which installs as a PWA on mobile. There's no separate native iOS or Android app — the PWA is the mobile experience.

Where do my credentials/tokens live? Is GATE storing my passwords?

GATE keeps secrets off the bot, and for third-party services, off GATE itself. There are two credential planes:

• Provider-backed integrations (Gmail, Stripe, Notion, and the other provider-backed integrations): OAuth tokens live inside GATE's integration provider, never in GATE. GATE stores only a record tying your user, bot, and service together — never the tokens themselves. The bot process never sees a third-party token.
• Slack: first-party — GATE stores the Slack workspace bot token itself, encrypted at rest in its own database, and keeps it out of bot hands.
• GitHub: GATE stores your GitHub OAuth token encrypted on the server and resolves the right identity automatically; it never enters the bot process or environment.
• Anthropic / model credentials ("auth profiles"): this is the one place GATE holds key material itself — it stores and rotates your OAuth access/refresh tokens on your behalf.
• Secrets via /secret: stored securely on the server and never enter chat history, the database, or logs.
• Vault: API keys, tokens, and passwords you place in Vault are encrypted in GATE's database. Every reveal or bot read is audited, and access is scoped to a bot, user, org, or the platform.

So bots never see your secrets — and for the provider-backed integrations, GATE never stores them at all. See Credentials & delegation.

Where does my data live? Is GATE EU-hosted?

Your data lives on your GATE server. GATE is a single-box platform: chat history, files, memory, bookkeeping records, and analytics rows all land in that server's own database and filesystem — nothing streams to third-party analytics or data services. That means residency follows the server: run it on an EU box and your data stays in the EU (web-analytics visits, for example, never leave the server's database — see See your site traffic).

Is my data used to train AI models?

GATE itself trains nothing — there is no training pipeline in the platform, and your conversations, files, and business records stay in your server's database. Bots call the model through your own credentials (auth profiles), so how the model provider handles those API calls is governed by your agreement with the provider — Anthropic's API terms, for instance, don't use API traffic for training by default.

What can a bot do without asking me, vs what needs my approval?

Needs a human (the bot cannot do it):

• Create/remove Slack channel bindings (dashboard only).
• Connect an integration (e.g. Gmail) and delegate it to a bot (dashboard).
• The AI "Set up from my account" social step (dashboard).
• Re-allow a revoked bot on a social account (non-master bots — a master bot can do it), or solve a 2FA/CAPTCHA challenge during social sign-in.
• Install the GATE GitHub App / approve the OAuth App (org owner).
• File anything with the authorities — bookkeeping prepares the VAT return, the SIE 4 export, and the annual report, but never submits to Skatteverket or Bolagsverket. You review and file.

Should be confirmed before acting: any billable or destructive Hetzner action — first server creation, resize, snapshot or server delete, firewall changes.

The bot does autonomously: read-only inspection (Slack status, project info, Gmail search/read), running an already-active social campaign, the autonomous build loop once started, and deploys once auto-deploy is wired.

The unifying rule: humans connect and grant; bots inspect, self-heal, and consume via delegation. A bot can never grant itself access.

Can external people talk to my bot?

Yes — via a guest bot channel.

Ask the bot to open a guest channel, and it creates a dedicated URL and a two-word passphrase to share.

The external guest is a visitor, not an owner; their messages are wrapped in <<<EXTERNAL_UNTRUSTED_CONTENT>>> markers and handled in a separate session, and you (the owner) see the full conversation in your own chat.

The default limit is 20 messages per channel (configurable, 0 = unlimited), and channels can be closed or reopened.

How do I give my bot access to my Google account / Gmail / Calendar?

Connect once, then delegate per bot:

1. Go to the GATE dashboard → Settings → Google.
2. Click Connect for Gmail (or the relevant Google service) and complete the provider's OAuth flow.
3. Delegate the specific bot(s) you want to have access.

Tokens stay in the provider; GATE only holds a record of the connection. If a bot lacks the delegation, it'll tell you and point you back to the dashboard to connect and delegate; if the token has expired or Google revoked it, ask the bot to re-authorize Gmail, and it DMs you a fresh sign-in link. Disconnecting entirely is a dashboard action.

What hosting options are supported for apps I build?

Two:

• GATE-hosted — you declare services in gate.json; GATE generates and runs all Docker/Caddy/DNS/TLS infrastructure. Services are served at {service}.{org}.<your GATE base domain> — the base domain is set in your server's config (e.g. myapp.acme.example.com using your GATE base domain).
• Hetzner (your own server, your bill) — the bot provisions and operates a Caddy + Docker Compose stack on your own Hetzner Cloud account. This is the default recommendation for production.

GATE does not host customer production apps on its own infrastructure for free — GATE is a development environment, not a hosting platform. See Build and deploy an app.

Can I connect WhatsApp?

Yes. Open WhatsApp → Accounts, start a connection, and scan the device-link QR from WhatsApp on your phone. Then bind selected DMs or groups to a bot from WhatsApp → Chats.

New chat bindings start on Observe, which reads without sending. You can move a chat to Copilot for human-approved drafts or Autopilot for direct replies. Connect WhatsApp walks through the full safety model.

How does push-to-live (auto-deploy) work?

On GATE-hosted projects, GATE sets up a webhook when you add a repo, and every verified push to the project's active branch triggers an automatic deploy — your code is pulled, migrations run, and the live app updates. Pushes to other branches are recorded but don't deploy; there is no mode setting to choose. On your own server, GATE runs the same verified deploy flow using your deploy command. Every deploy is verified before it runs, on both hosting paths.

Can the bot run Instagram/LinkedIn outreach for me?

Yes, on Instagram and LinkedIn — the bot discovers prospects, AI-screens them, then likes/comments/follows/DMs at a safe, capped pace, with built-in cooldowns and a security scanner watching for trouble. Facebook is content/posting only — no outreach.

Can the bot log into websites and download files as me?

Yes. Your bot can drive a real, visible browser with a live view you can watch — and take over — at any point. If a site needs login, you log in once through that live view; the session persists so you're not asked again. Downloaded files land in your bot's file storage. Start the browser before use and stop it after when you're done.

How do I send a teammate a notification from chat?

Just ask the bot to send a teammate a notification — it delivers the push on your behalf.

The recipient's phone buzzes and the message shows the human sender (resolved from the chat session), not the bot.

The recipient must have the PWA installed with notifications enabled and be in the same org (with two exceptions: any bot can notify a master user across orgs, and a master bot can notify anyone).

See Notifications.

Why did my project setup fail with "Git clone failed"?

The GATE GitHub App isn't installed on the repo's org.

An org owner installs it at https://github.com/apps/gate-projects/installations/new.

A separate 403 / "OAuth App access restrictions" error on push is a different switch — the OAuth App approval at https://github.com/orgs/<org>/policies/applications/requested.

The two are independent.

Going deeper: read Credentials & delegation for the full auth model, or Build and deploy an app for the hosting and deploy walkthrough.