ceven

Ably

Triggers real time notifications, monitors live user presence, and syncs message history across your SaaS stack to keep distributed teams in sync.

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Why use Ceven?

  1. AI native Ably integration

    • Describe the outcome and Ceven picks the right Ably calls, fills the parameters, and checks the result.
    • Structured, agent friendly tool schemas so each call runs reliably instead of by guesswork.
    • Rich coverage for reading, writing, and querying your Ably data, across all 25 of its actions.

  2. Managed auth

    • Built in OAuth with automatic token refresh and rotation.
    • One place to manage, scope, and revoke Ably access.
    • Per user and per environment credentials instead of shared keys.

  3. Agent optimized design

    • Actions are tuned from real success and error rates so reliability climbs over time.
    • Full execution logs so you always know what ran in Ably, when, and on whose behalf.
    • The agent pauses and asks when Ably is unclear instead of plowing ahead.

  4. Enterprise grade security

    • Fine grained access so you control which agents and people can reach Ably.
    • Least privilege by default, read scopes first and only the writes a workflow needs.
    • A full audit trail of every Ably action to support review and sign off.

Supported tools

Every action Ceven's agents can run on Ably, and when to use it.

Publish message
Use this to send a message or event to a specific Ably channel to update live clients.
Get channel history
Pull a paginated list of previous messages from a channel to reconstruct a conversation or audit events.
Get channel details
Retrieve metadata, occupancy, and current status for a specific communication channel.
Create channel
Initialize a new messaging channel for a specific group of users or a new project room.
Query batch presence
Check the current online status of users across multiple channels in one request.
Query batch presence history
Pull a historical log of who was present in multiple channels over a specific time window.
Get presence history
Retrieve the join and leave events for a single channel to analyze user engagement.
List push subscriptions
Pull a list of all devices subscribed to push notifications for your Ably channels.
Delete push subscription
Unsubscribe a specific device from receiving push notifications for a channel.
Get application stats
Pull usage metrics by minute, hour, or day to monitor platform costs and traffic spikes.
Get service time
Retrieve the current Ably server time in milliseconds for precise token synchronization.
Search channel members
Identify which users are currently attached to a specific channel ID.
Create Ably Channel
Creates a new channel or retrieves an existing channel in ably. this tool allows you to programmatically create and initialize channels for real time messaging. since ably creates channels implicitly when first used, this action publishes a
Delete Channel Subscription
This tool allows you to unsubscribe devices or clients from push notifications for specific channels. the operation is asynchronous, so immediate requests after deletion may briefly still return the subscription.
Get Channel Presence History
This tool retrieves the history of presence messages for a specified channel in ably. it allows you to query presence events on a channel within a given time period.
Get Ably Service Time
This tool retrieves the current server time from ably's service in milliseconds since the epoch. it is particularly useful for time synchronization and generating valid tokenrequest timestamps to prevent replay attacks. the endpoint support
List Push Channel Subscriptions
This tool retrieves a list of all push notification channel subscriptions. it allows you to view all active push notification subscriptions for channels in your ably application. allows filtering by channel, deviceid, and clientid, supports
Publish Message to Channel
This tool will allow users to publish a message to a specified ably channel using a post request. it covers the essentials like channel name, message data, optional event name/type, and additional metadata for push notifications. it is an i

18 actions · scroll to see them all

Frequently asked questions

Ceven interacts with Ably using the REST API to pull history when needed. Ably stores messages for a limited time based on your plan, typically twenty four hours or more if you have persistence enabled on the channel. When a workflow triggers, Ceven can pull these messages to provide context to the AI model. If you need longer term storage, you can set up a Ceven workflow that triggers on every Ably publish event and writes the data to a permanent database like PostgreSQL or MongoDB. This ensures you have a permanent record even after the Ably persistence window closes.
Yes. Ceven connects to Ably webhooks to listen for specific events in real time. When a user publishes a message or changes their presence state, Ably sends a POST request to the Ceven endpoint. The agent then parses the payload and runs the associated workflow. For example, if a user joins a high priority channel, Ceven can immediately notify your sales team in Slack. This turns Ably from a simple messaging pipe into an event driven engine that can control other software in your stack without requiring you to write custom backend code.
Ceven is subject to the rate limits imposed by your Ably plan. Ably uses a credit system where different operations cost different amounts of credits. If your workflow triggers a high volume of API calls, you might hit your plan ceiling. Specifically, be aware that Ably restricts the frequency of REST API calls more strictly than its websocket connections. If you are processing thousands of events per second, we recommend using Ably's native channel rules to filter events before they hit Ceven to avoid hitting these limits and incurring unnecessary costs.
Ceven uses Ably API keys to authenticate requests. You provide your key through the secure connection portal, and we encrypt it at rest. The agent uses this key to sign requests and generate short lived tokens for specific operations. You can restrict the permissions of the key you give to Ceven using Ably's capability system. For instance, if you only want Ceven to read messages but not publish them, you can create a key with read only capabilities. This ensures that the agent can only perform the actions you have explicitly authorized.
Yes. Ceven can manage the subscription lifecycle for Ably push notifications. It can add new device tokens to a channel or remove them when a user opts out. You can build a workflow where a specific event in your CRM triggers an Ably push notification to all users in a specific channel. Because Ceven can read the subscription list, it can also provide reports on how many devices are actually reachable for a given campaign, allowing you to track the reach of your real time alerts.
Ceven utilizes the Ably Presence API to monitor who is online. The agent can query the current state of a channel to see a list of active users or look at the presence history to see when users joined and left. This is useful for building automated workflows that trigger when a user goes offline. For example, if a customer support agent leaves a chat channel without closing the ticket, Ceven can detect the presence change and reassign the ticket to an active agent to ensure the customer is not left waiting.
Ceven operates primarily at the channel level. While it can interact with any channel you specify, it does not currently manage Ably channel groups as a first class entity. To handle groups, you should design your workflow to iterate through a list of channels. You can use a Ceven search step to find all channels that match a specific naming convention and then run a batch presence query across those channels. This allows you to achieve group like functionality while staying within the standard Ably API constraints.
Ceven implements an exponential backoff retry strategy for all Ably API calls. If the service returns a five hundred error or a timeout, the agent will wait a few seconds before trying again. If the outage persists, the workflow will enter a paused state and notify the administrator. Because we use a queue based architecture, any events sent via webhooks from Ably during an outage are buffered and processed in order once the connection is restored, ensuring that no critical real time data is lost during a service disruption.

Alternatives to Ably

Other tools that solve a similar problem. Ceven supports these too, so you can switch or run more than one at once.

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