Core Concepts

Modem ingests messages from your connected sources and uses AI to organize them into a few key entities. Here’s a quick overview of each.

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Topics

Topics are AI-discovered conversation themes. When users discuss similar subjects across different channels or time periods, Modem groups those conversations into a topic. A topic might be:

• “Users struggling with OAuth setup” (spanning Slack support questions and GitHub issues)
• “Feature request: Dark mode” (collected from Discord suggestions and email feedback)
• “Performance issues on mobile” (bug reports across multiple channels)

Each topic has an AI-generated title, summary, feedback classification (bug report, feature request, complaint, or praise), and a priority level. Topics are created automatically as messages arrive. Learn more about Topics →

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Discussions

Discussions are distinct conversations within a topic. A single topic might contain several discussions that happened at different times or in different channels. For example, a “Dark mode” topic might have one discussion from March when it was first requested, another in June with follow-up questions, and a third in August about contrast issues.

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People

People are unified profiles that represent real humans across your connected platforms. When someone is active on Slack, GitHub, and Discord, Modem can recognize them as the same person and consolidate their activity into one profile. Each person tracks their messages, topics they’ve contributed to, platform identities, and company association. Learn more about People →

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Companies

Companies group people by organization, giving you an account-level view of engagement. Each company tracks its associated people, their roles, and employment history. Companies can be created automatically from organizational signals in your data or manually from the dashboard. Learn more about Companies →

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Channels

Channels are the specific places where conversations happen: a Slack channel, a Discord server channel, a GitHub repository, or an email inbox. Modem tracks where messages come from so you can filter and analyze by source.

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The Agent

The Modem Agent is an AI assistant that can answer questions about your data, find patterns, and take action. Instead of manually browsing and filtering, you ask questions in plain language. You can talk to the agent from the Modem dashboard or directly in Slack (via DM or @mention). It has access to all your topics, messages, people, and connected integrations, and can do things like create Linear issues, post to Slack, query GitHub, or delegate coding tasks to Cursor and Devin. A few examples: The agent also powers scheduled tasks, where you can run prompts on a recurring schedule. Learn more about the Agent →

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Next Steps