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 (your full Gmail inbox as Email entities, 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. Desktop & Computer Use — your screen as input#

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

Local file access — drag any file into River and it becomes an entity with full text indexed.
System tray Agent Panel — invoke automations from anywhere, even when River isn't focused.
Computer Use — let an AI agent operate your machine on your behalf. It can open a browser, log into a service, type, click, screenshot, and report results.
Screen-aware AI — agents can read what's on your screen (with permission) to understand the context you're working in across native apps.
Global shortcut — press a hotkey from anywhere to summon SpaceChat.
Native notifications — desktop alerts when a Job finishes or a Schedule produces a result.

This is what turns River from a workspace into something closer to an OS layer over your existing computer.

→ See Desktop & Computer Use.

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, email.received, 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

Computer Use and screen reading require explicit permissions on your OS. River prompts the system dialogs the first time it needs them.

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 who works across native apps daily — that's where Computer Use shines.