Mirage

Mirage at mirage.cactive.com.au is the platform's chat for communities and teams: servers with channels, threads and forums, direct messages encrypted on your devices, roles and permissions, the server's own emoji, bots, and Caity in every server. The API reference covers every route.

Servers

Anyone can create a server, from a template or from scratch, and invite people with a link: the + at the foot of the server rail holds Create a Server and Join With an Invite. Owners and people with Manage Server change its profile, community features (onboarding, welcome screen, rules, a public page) and safety settings in Server Settings, at the top of the channel list (or in the server's menu) for anyone who manages something there. Settings open as a layer over the app, each section at its own address, so links and Back work, and Close or Esc takes you back to where you were; with unsaved changes, the bar at the foot asks you to save or reset them before you go. Right-click a server in the rail to mark it read, invite people, open its settings or leave it. The header's sidebar button (or ⌘B) folds the sidebar to the rail.

Channels

• Text: messages, files, threads.
• Announcement: updates; only some can post. Follow one (in its header) to have the posts it publishes show up in a channel of yours, where you have Manage Webhooks; Publish sends a post to everyone following, and its edits and deletion follow it there. Server Settings → Integrations lists what your channels follow.
• Forum: posts, each with its own conversation, sorted by recent activity or creation.
• Voice: talking, video and screen sharing. Click one to join it; Open Chat (beside it, or in its menu) shows its chat without joining.
• Categories group channels in the list.

Each channel can override its server's permissions for a role or a member, in its settings (the gear beside it, with Manage Channels). Right-click a channel to mark it read, invite people to it, copy its link or edit it. With Manage Channels, drag channels and categories in the list to reorder them, or drop a channel on a category to move it there. Click a category's name to fold it away, and drag the list's edge to make it wider or narrower.

Messages

Messages are up to 4,000 characters of Markdown (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, spoilers, code, quotes) with mentions of people, roles, channels, @everyone and @here. The composer completes @ people and roles, # channels and : emoji as you type. Reply, edit, react, pin (50 a channel) and attach up to 10 files of up to 25 MB each (Upload a File, in the + at the start of the message box), or drop or paste them on the chat. The + also creates a poll, sends later and records a voice message. Right-click a message to copy its text, link or id, mark it unread, start a thread or delete it (Shift skips the question). A message's link opens it in its channel or thread.

The Inbox (top right) lists your recent mentions across all your servers (your roles and @everyone/@here too, unless you've suppressed them in a server's notification settings) and the channels you haven't read, to jump to or mark read.

Record a voice message with + → Record Voice Message (up to five minutes; Esc cancels): it's sent as a short audio file with its waveform, and plays in place. It needs Attach Files.

Send Later (+ → Send Later: in an hour, tomorrow or Monday morning, or a custom time) posts what you've typed at that time, as you; while it waits, a note above the box lists it, to cancel. Remind Me (a message's menu) brings a message back at a time you pick, in the app and on your phone, and saves it to Later.

Save for Later (a message's menu, or the bookmark in its hover bar) keeps it in your Later list, the bookmark in a channel's header: tick one off when you're done with it.

Forward a message (Forward in its menu) to up to five channels or direct messages, with a note if you like. The copy keeps the text, files and link previews as they were and says where it came from, a link back for people who can see that channel; it doesn't carry its author or notify anyone it mentions. Forwards to direct messages are encrypted on your device like any other message, with the files listed by name.

Threads and forums

Start a thread from any message, or from a channel's thread list. Threads have their channel's permissions; private threads (text channels) are visible to the people in them and to moderators. A thread archives after an hour, a day, three days or a week without messages and reopens when someone replies; moderators can lock it. Threads you follow show under their channel.

Search

The header's search finds the open server's messages: words (case and accents don't matter) and filters you can combine:

Results show newest or oldest first, by channel and thread; Jump opens the message there. Search only shows what you can read.

Your settings

Mute, Deafen and Settings sit at the foot of the sidebar. Settings opens User Settings (a layer over the app, like a server's settings; Close or Esc goes back): My Account and Profile (your picture, name, About Me and colours, which are your Cactive ID profile everywhere), the devices that can read your direct messages, linked accounts, desktop notifications and their sound, the theme, voice and video, and the keyboard shortcuts.

Last.fm

In User Settings → Connections (You → Connections on your phone), link your Last.fm account with Last.fm's sign-in, or by username if your listening is public (marked unverified). While you're online, what you're playing shows as your activity: "Listening to" under your name in member lists and DM headers, and the track with its album art on your card. Your full profile shows your top artists this week, most played first, with their pictures and plays, and links to your Last.fm page. Choose who sees both (everyone, friends or only you), or hide your listening activity and keep the profile section. Unlinking deletes Mirage's access (API).

People

Click anyone (a name, an avatar, a mention, a member, someone in a voice channel) for their card, and right-click for their menu: Profile, Message, Call, Add Friend, Block, Report and Copy User ID, and in a server Mention and what you may do there (nickname, roles, time out, kick, ban, voice moderation). Their full profile adds your private note and the servers and friends you share. Right-click a reaction, or use View Reactions in a message's menu, to see who reacted.

On your phone, mentions and direct messages notify in the Mirage app. On a phone without it, or with its notifications turned off, they come to your other Cactive apps instead (Home first) and open Mirage when tapped.

Direct messages

Message friends and people you share a server with, one to one or in groups of up to 10. Messages are encrypted on your devices before they're sent: the server stores only ciphertext, a new device gets earlier messages from one of your other devices, and the key changes when a group's members change. Because the server can't read them, direct messages aren't searchable on the server.

Emoji

Each server has up to 100 still and 100 animated emoji of its own (Server Settings → Emoji, with Manage Emoji). Use them in messages and reactions there, and in other servers where Use External Emoji is allowed.

Unicode emoji are Microsoft's Fluent Emoji (MIT licence), animated where Microsoft made an animation. They show still frames when your system asks for reduced motion, and on the phone.

Roles and moderation

Permissions work as on Discord: @everyone's, then each role's (a role can't change roles above it), then channel overrides. Moderators can time members out, kick and ban them from a member's card or the member list; the audit log keeps 45 days of changes.

Report a message (in its menu), a person (on their card), a direct message or a whole server (in the server's menu on the phone) with a reason. A server's reports go to its moderators in Server Settings → Reports, without who reported, and to a reports channel if the server sets one in Safety Setup; platform staff review every report, including direct messages, whose text the report shares as your device decrypted it, and reports of a server, which go to staff only. Staff hear about each new report in the app and by email (Mirage report, in their notification settings).

AutoMod (Server Settings → AutoMod, with Manage Server) catches messages before they post: blocked words and phrases (word for the whole word, word*, *word and *word* for parts of words, with an allow list), invites to other servers, mention spam and link floods. A rule can block the message with a note to its sender, post an alert to a channel and time the sender out; roles and channels can be exempt. The owner, administrators, people with Manage Server and bots aren't checked.

Bots and Caity

Build apps with bot users, slash commands and signed interactions in the Developer Portal (Mirage apps and bots). Caity is in every server: mention it, reply to it or use /caity. It reads the recent messages of that channel it can see, and never direct messages. In Caity's own chat, with Personal spaces turned on, it can also tell you what you missed across your servers, find messages, and post for you once you confirm (Caity → Personal spaces).

Catch Me Up (the sparkles in a channel's header) has Caity summarise what you haven't read there, or the recent conversation when you're up to date: topics, decisions, open questions and anything waiting on you. Only you see it, and it reads only what Caity may read in that channel.

Feed

Feed is Mirage's social side, on the same people and servers as chat: profiles, follows, posts with photos, videos and polls, replies, reposts and quotes, For You and Following, stories, server feeds, events and pages. It's in the rail on the web and a tab in the Mirage app.

Feed is for people 16 and over, as Australian law requires. Depending on how the platform has it set, Feed asks for your date of birth (kept on your Cactive ID account, once; support corrects it) and may ask for a quick face check with your camera in Cactive ID. The face check keeps the result, never the images. Under 16, Feed stays closed until you turn 16; your servers, channels and direct messages work as before. Your date of birth is on your account's Profile page.

Discord

A server can be bridged with a Discord server, so the same conversation carries on in both places (API):

1. Link your Discord account (Settings → Connections, or from Server Settings → Discord). Your Discord messages then show as yours in Mirage, marked "via Discord", and your Mirage messages show on Discord with your Discord name.
2. Add Caity to your Discord server with the link in Server Settings → Discord (it asks to read and post in channels, react, and make webhooks and channels), then connect it. You need Manage Server on both sides.
3. Pair channels: an existing channel or a new one on either side, and which way messages go: both ways, Mirage to Discord, or Discord to Mirage. You can only pair channels you can read on both sides.

In a pair, messages, edits, deletes and reactions cross over. People on Discord who haven't linked an account show with their Discord name and avatar and a DISCORD tag; their messages can't be edited here, and deleting one here leaves Discord's copy. Mentions arrive as names and never notify anyone across the bridge; files sent from Mirage appear on Discord as links, and files from Discord are copied here. Threads, polls and Discord's own emoji and stickers stay where they were posted.

Import from Discord copies chosen channels with their categories, roles (names, colours and permissions, never more than you have) and each text channel's newest messages with their files. It runs in the background; you can stop it, and what it copied stays.