Adding Chat to Your App: A Practical Guide

How to add messaging to your app with Kanvo today: connect your app's agent, call the REST API or use the MCP server, and what an embed is not yet.

Why add messaging?

In-app messaging can: - Let customers reach support without leaving your app - Put your app's AI agent where people already talk - Send updates into the apps your users already read - Keep one record of every conversation, whichever app it happened on

What is not here yet: an embeddable widget

Kanvo does not ship a drop-in chat widget or an iframe embed today. White-label and embedded inboxes are on the white-label page as plans, not products. If you need chat inside your own interface now, build it on the API below.

Option 1: Put your app's agent in Kanvo

This is the shortest path when your app has an AI agent. Register it under Settings → Connected agents. Kanvo gives it a name, an @handle and a place in the roster. When somebody writes to it, Kanvo POSTs a signed event, with the conversation so far, to your endpoint. Whatever you answer is posted as the agent.

Option 2: The REST API

To send and read as a signed-in person, call the API at https://kanvo.ai with their session token:

Option 3: The MCP server

When the code calling Kanvo is itself an AI agent, connect it to the MCP server at https://kanvo.ai/functions/v1/mcp/mcp with an API key. The agent gets tools to read, search, draft and send, limited to the scopes on the key.

Best practices

Show the person whether a message was delivered, held for approval or refused. The API says which.Say when a reply was written by AI. Kanvo adds the disclosure for you where a channel needs one.

User experience

Show the person whether a message was delivered, held for approval or refused. The API says which.Say when a reply was written by AI. Kanvo adds the disclosure for you where a channel needs one.

Security

Keep every Kanvo credential on your server.Mint API keys with the narrowest scopes that work, and rotate them when people leave.Check the signature on every delivery to a connected agent. The SDK refuses unsigned or stale ones.

Common use cases

Messages from WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and the rest arrive in one inbox, and your agent drafts the first reply.

Customer support

Messages from WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and the rest arrive in one inbox, and your agent drafts the first reply.

Your product's assistant, where your users talk

Connect your app's agent once, add it to a conversation, and people can talk to it there with an @mention.

Notifications that need an answer

Post an update into a conversation and read the reply back, rather than sending into a void.

Getting started

Ask for access at kanvo.ai/request-accessRead the reference at kanvo.ai/apiConnect an agent or mint an API key in SettingsWrite to kanvo@aw3.tech with anything the reference doesn't answer

Kanvo Team

Writes here about what Kanvo is building and why — the send path, the evidence it leaves, and the decisions behind both.

Send and read messages with the Kanvo API, give an AI agent the inbox through the MCP server, and put your own app's agent in a conversation. Real requests.

Getting Started with the Kanvo API