Portals
A Portal is a live view of a service running in a Thread's Environment, such as a dashboard, a form or a preview of a website the agent is building. You open it in Whorl and use it like any web page. Portals let you check and use what an agent builds without asking it to export anything.
A Portal is private. It is served on an address that only people who can open the Thread can use, and Whorl authorizes you when you open it.
Start a Portal
You ask the agent for one. In the Thread, say something like:
- "Show me in a portal."
- "Start the application in a portal."
- "Make the server available in a portal."
The agent starts the app in the Thread's Environment and declares it as a Portal. When the Thread has no Portals, the Portals panel lists these example requests.
Open a Portal
- Open the Portals panel beside the conversation. The tab shows how many Portals the Thread has.
- Find the Portal in the list. Its status is one of:
- Healthy: running and ready to use.
- Starting: coming up.
- Stopped: declared but not running.
- Sleeping: the Thread's Environment is asleep, and the Portal sleeps with it.
- Unhealthy: running, but not answering correctly.
- Choose Open. If your browser blocks the new tab, allow pop-ups for Whorl and choose Open again.
If a Portal is sleeping, choose Wake. If it is stopped, choose Start. After a failure, choose Restart or Try again.
Use Refresh Portals to reload the list. A Portal you stop or remove comes off the list, and the app it served stops.
When something is wrong
When a Portal shows a problem instead of the app, Whorl says why: a build error, a script error with its file and line, or a page that rendered nothing. Choose Ask the agent to fix and the agent receives the problem and corrects it. After the agent changes the app, the open Portal reloads on its own.
Where Portals come from
Agents build the apps behind Portals with Whorl's app kit, so they look like the rest of Whorl and follow your theme. A Portal belongs to one Thread. To see a Portal's owner from elsewhere, choose View owning Thread.
Portals and Boxes
A Portal lasts as long as its Thread's Environment. For an app that should stay on, with its own code and a machine that does not sleep, see Boxes.