Gateway
Last updated: February 16, 2026
A gateway is a service that acts as the central entry point for an application, managing request routing, authentication, protocol translation, and connection lifecycle. In the context of AI assistants, a gateway is the process that receives user messages, routes them to the AI agent, and delivers responses back through the appropriate channel.
How It Works
An AI assistant gateway typically runs as a long-lived process that listens on an internal port. It handles several responsibilities:
- Authentication: Validating bearer tokens or other credentials on incoming requests to ensure only authorized clients can interact with the agent.
- Protocol handling: Supporting both HTTP REST requests and WebSocket connections for real-time, bidirectional communication.
- Channel routing: Directing messages from different sources (web UI, Telegram, Discord, Slack) to the appropriate agent handler.
- State management: Maintaining session context, conversation history, and connection state across interactions.
The gateway is usually not exposed directly to the internet. Instead, a reverse proxy sits in front of it, handling SSL termination, public routing, and credential injection.
Why It Matters
The gateway is the operational heart of a deployed AI assistant. Its reliability, configuration, and authentication setup directly determine whether users can connect, whether messages are delivered, and whether the system is secure. A misconfigured gateway results in connection failures, authentication errors, or unauthorized access.
In Practice
When deploying an AI assistant, the gateway is typically started as a child process managed by the deployment wrapper. The wrapper monitors the gateway's health by polling readiness endpoints, injects authentication tokens into proxied requests, and restarts the gateway when configuration changes. Key gateway settings include the listening port, authentication token, trusted proxy configuration, and channel-specific parameters. Understanding the gateway's role helps you diagnose common issues like "pairing required" errors, WebSocket disconnections, or token mismatch failures.