Choose Your Interface

Astonish provides multiple interfaces for different workflows and environments. All interfaces connect to the same platform and share sessions, memory, and flows. The daemon must be running for all interfaces to function.

Interfaces

Recommended Starting Point

New to Astonish? Start with Studio — it gives you the full visual experience with chat, flow design, generative UI, and settings management. You can always connect the CLI later for terminal workflows.

Studio (Web UI)

The full visual interface running at http://localhost:9393. Includes the chat interface, visual flow designer, apps tab for generative UI, settings management, and real-time agent execution display with token tracking. Studio is served automatically by the daemon — just open http://localhost:9393 in your browser.

Best for: flow design, generative UI, managing apps and settings, visual execution monitoring.

CLI

A rich terminal chat interface with colors, markdown rendering, and interactive elements. Supports all agent capabilities including tool use, memory, and flow execution. Requires authentication via astonish login before use.

astonish login http://localhost:9393    # Authenticate against the platform
astonish chat                           # New session
astonish chat -p openai -m gpt-4o      # Specific provider/model
astonish chat --resume                  # Resume last session

Best for: quick interactions, scripting, developers who prefer the terminal.

Remote CLI

The same CLI used for local access, pointed at a remote server. Authenticates via password or SSO, then provides the full CLI experience against the remote platform.

astonish login https://platform.yourcompany.com
astonish chat
astonish flows list
astonish status

Best for: team members accessing the shared platform remotely, CI/CD integration.

Telegram

Bot integration for mobile and desktop access. Supports database-backed allowlists and dynamic per-message routing in cloud deployments. Switch org and team context with in-channel commands.

Best for: quick questions on mobile, notifications, async interactions.

Email

Send messages to the agent via email. Supports plus-addressing for per-org routing (bot+orgname@domain.com). Responses are delivered back to the sender.

Best for: async workflows, forwarding content for processing, users who prefer email.

Slack

Workspace integration with team-scoped routing. Messages route to the correct org and team context based on the Slack workspace and channel configuration.

Best for: team collaboration, integrating agent responses into existing Slack workflows.

Comparison

Interface	Deployment	Real-time	Visual	Mobile
Studio	Local / Cloud	Yes	Yes	No
CLI	Local / Cloud	Yes	No	No
Remote CLI	Cloud only	Yes	No	No
Telegram	Local / Cloud	Yes	No	Yes
Email	Local / Cloud	No (async)	No	Yes
Slack	Cloud only	Yes	No	Yes

Running Multiple Interfaces

Interfaces are not mutually exclusive. You can run Studio for visual work while using the CLI for quick tasks, and have Telegram configured for mobile access. All interfaces share the same sessions, memory, and platform context.

The daemon (astonish daemon start) must be running for all interfaces to function. The CLI authenticates against the daemon via astonish login.