Senses & Connections

A workspace that only knows what you typed into it is blind. River's Senses are the channels through which the outside world becomes part of your world model — the perception layer between everything happening out there and your structured workspace in here.

Why this is its own layer#

Most apps have integrations. River has Senses for the same reason brains have eyes and ears, not "data inputs" — because once the world flows in continuously, every other layer can act on it.

When an email arrives, it doesn't just sit in an inbox. It becomes an entity in your tree, fires an event on the Event Stream, shows up in Search, can be referenced by an Agent, can be attached to a project, can be summarized by AI, can be linked to a contact in your relationship graph. One channel of perception, every layer of the system reacting.

That's what an OS does that an app can't: it makes external signals part of the substrate, not a sidebar.

The four channels#

1. Integrations — the always-on connections#

Integrations are the most common channel. You connect a service once (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Slack, Stripe, GitHub, Plaid…) and from then on, the data flows in continuously as entities you can read, search, and act on.

There are 100+ integrations and growing. They split into two patterns:

Tool-based — the AI calls the service on demand (e.g., search Slack, post a message, look up a Stripe customer)
Entity-based — data syncs continuously into your workspace as entities (for example, your calendar as Event entities)

Most integrations support both: they sync some things and expose tools for others.

→ See Integrations for the full catalog.

2. Browser Extension — clip from anywhere on the web#

The River Browser Extension lets you save anything from the web straight into your workspace. A page becomes a clipped Doc with full text. A selection becomes a Note. A screenshot becomes an Image entity. A YouTube video becomes a Transcript.

It works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, and any Chromium browser. Right-click on any page or selection and pick where in River it should land.

→ See Browser Extension.

3. The Desktop App — your computer and your signed-in sites#

When you run the River Desktop App, River gains capabilities the browser can't:

Local file access — drag any file into River and it becomes an entity with full text indexed.
Your own Browser — Browser windows are your own browser, signed in to your sites. The AI can read pages, click, type and fill in forms there while you watch, asking before anything that buys, sends, posts or deletes.
Apps from the web — apps from the App Store open in their own window, signed in as you, and the AI can use them like any site.
Global shortcut — press a hotkey from anywhere to summon SpaceChat.
Native notifications — desktop alerts when a Job finishes or a Schedule produces a result.

The AI works on River's screen, the way you do. It doesn't control the rest of your computer's screen, mouse or keyboard.

→ See Desktop App.

4. Direct ingestion — drop, drag, paste#

Sometimes you just have a thing — a PDF, a transcript, a CSV, a video file, a folder of contracts. Drop it into River and it becomes an entity with:

The full content extracted and indexed
Type-aware metadata (a PDF gets page count and OCR; a transcript gets speakers; a CSV gets columns)
An entity ID, a path, and a place in Search
Optional Entity Extraction — the AI scans the content for structured objects (Companies, People, Vehicles, Contracts) and proposes them for your knowledge graph

Drag a folder of 200 PDFs in and River will extract, index, and make all of them searchable. No setup.

What happens after ingestion#

Once something has flowed in through any of the four channels, the same loop kicks in:

Entity created — it has a permanent home and a path
Event fires — entity.created, file.uploaded, etc.
Search indexed — instantly findable
Agents may wake up — anything subscribed to that event triggers
Signal Intelligence scores it — does it deserve attention now?
Surfaces update — Activity, Notifications, Suggestion Tray

This is the engine that makes River feel alive: external stimulus comes in, the workspace reacts, and the result is waiting for you when you turn to it.

Privacy and control#

You choose what flows in. Every integration is opt-in and configurable:

Limit which folders, labels, or accounts sync
Block specific senders or filetypes
Pause an integration without disconnecting it
Disconnect anytime; entities already ingested stay where they are

When the AI works in your signed-in sites, it never types passwords, one-time codes or card numbers — you enter those and handle sign-ins yourself.

Tips#

Connect Gmail and Calendar early — they're the highest-leverage Senses for most people.
The Browser Extension is the cheapest way to start building a knowledge base from the open web.
The Desktop App is worth it for anyone whose work lives in sites they sign in to — that's where the AI working in your own Browser shines.