A new kind of chat for the AI age — humans and agents, thinking and acting together.
Synapse is a group chat platform where humans and AI agents participate as first-class members — talking, deliberating, and taking action together. Built on Astrocyte, it retains every decision in governed memory so future sessions can recall what was previously decided.
The name is deliberate: in neuroscience, a synapse is the connection point between neurons where computation happens. Astrocytes mediate and maintain the environment around those synapses. Synapse is the deliberation layer that Astrocyte makes possible.
Human ────┐
Agent A ──┼──→ Synapse Council Engine ──→ Verdict + action
Agent B ──┘ │
│ retain / recall
▼
Astrocyte
(governed memory)
- Councils — orchestrate multiple AI agents or LLMs to deliberate on a question in structured stages: gather individual opinions, peer-rank them, synthesise a final verdict
- Chat — three modes: chat to start a council, chat during a council as a human participant, and chat with the verdict after it closes (powered by Astrocyte
reflect()) - Persistent memory — every council session is retained in Astrocyte; future councils recall relevant past decisions before deliberating
- Governed deliberation — Astrocyte's policy layer (PII barriers, rate limits, access control) applies to all memory operations; MIP routes decisions to the right memory banks
- Multi-surface access — a Svelte web UI for the browser, a Flutter desktop app for rich council observation, a Flutter mobile app for notifications and approvals, and an MCP server for agent-to-agent access
- Messaging integrations — Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, Google Chat, Lark, WeCom, and more: start a council with a slash command, receive verdict cards, approve decisions, and ask follow-up questions in thread without leaving your chat app
- Council templates — built-in templates (architecture-review, security-audit, code-review, red-team, product-decision, solo) with custom template support and inheritance
- Multi-round deliberation — draft → critique → refine cycles with convergence detection; red team mode for structured adversarial risk analysis
- Decision workflows — conflict detection against precedents, human approval chains, council chains, auto-promotion thresholds, and GDPR-compliant demotion
- Scheduling — one-time, recurring (cron), and externally triggered councils; APScheduler-based
- Analytics — member performance leaderboard, decision velocity, consensus distribution, topic clustering, knowledge coverage dashboard
- RBAC — five roles (viewer → member → approver → admin → owner) with JWT claim mapping and Astrocyte bank-level enforcement
- Webhooks and exports — HMAC-signed outbound events for every council lifecycle event; export integrations for Notion, Confluence, GitHub, Linear, and Markdown vaults
- SDK —
synapse-py(PyPI) andsynapse-ts(npm), both generated from the OpenAPI schema - Email notifications — council concluded, approval requests, conflict alerts, weekly digest; configurable per-user preferences
- Multi-tenancy and billing — per-tenant isolation via Astrocyte
tenant_id, quota enforcement, Stripe subscription management; self-hosted single-tenant mode available
Synapse is not a memory framework. It does not implement retain / recall / reflect — that is Astrocyte's job. Synapse owns the deliberation protocol, session lifecycle, and multi-agent orchestration.
Synapse is not an LLM gateway. It calls LLMs to run councils but does not route or normalise general completion requests.
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Frontends │
│ Svelte (web) │ Flutter (desktop) │ Flutter (mobile) │
└───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
│ REST / SSE / WebSocket
┌───────────────▼───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Synapse Backend (FastAPI) │
│ │
│ Council Engine │ MCP Server │ Auth │
│ (orchestration, │ (agent-to- │ (JWT) │
│ stages, stream) │ agent) │ │
└───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
│ Python library or HTTP gateway
┌───────────────▼───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Astrocyte │
│ retain │ recall │ reflect │ forget │
│ MIP routing │ Policy │ Governance │
└───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌───────────────▼───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Storage (pgvector, Neo4j, …) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
| Surface | Technology | Primary use |
|---|---|---|
| Web | Svelte + SvelteKit | Browser-based council dashboard, memory explorer |
| Desktop | Flutter | Rich council observation, local Astrocyte dev experience |
| Mobile | Flutter | Notifications, read councils, approve decisions |
Synapse connects to Astrocyte in one of two modes, selected by configuration:
| Mode | How | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Library | Astrocyte imported as Python package, runs in-process | Development, single-node |
| Gateway | Synapse calls astrocyte-gateway-py over HTTP |
Production, multi-tenant, polyglot |
The council engine is identical in both modes. Only the AstrocyteClient transport changes.
Synapse is open source under the Apache License 2.0.
All content under any ee/ directory is licensed under the Synapse Enterprise Edition License — proprietary, requires a Cerebro subscription for production use. Development and testing use is permitted without a subscription.
| Directory | License |
|---|---|
Everything outside ee/ |
Apache 2.0 |
apps/backend/ee/ |
Synapse EE License (proprietary) |
Enterprise features (multi-tenancy, SAML SSO, compliance audit trails, DSAR automation) are unlocked by setting SYNAPSE_LICENSE_KEY on your self-hosted instance. Contact odeoncg.ai for a license key.
- Architecture — layer boundaries, component responsibilities, data flow
- Council engine — deliberation stages, session lifecycle, memory integration
- Chat — three chat modes, human-in-the-loop, WebSocket, chat with verdict
- Deliberation — multi-round cycles, red team mode, verdict metadata
- Templates — built-in templates, custom templates, inheritance
- Workflows — decision lifecycle, conflict detection, approval chains
- Scheduling — scheduled, recurring, and triggered councils
- Analytics — member leaderboard, decision velocity, topic clustering
- RBAC — roles, permissions, JWT claim mapping
- Webhooks — outbound events, export integrations (Notion, Confluence, GitHub)
- SDK — synapse-py and synapse-ts client libraries
- Notifications — email notifications, weekly digest, per-user preferences
- Multi-tenancy — tenant isolation, quotas, Stripe billing
- Integrations — Slack, Teams, Lark bots: commands, verdict cards, thread chat
- Tech stack — technology decisions and rationale
- Project structure — monorepo layout and conventions