Bot platform adapters now ship in the
praisonai-bot package. praisonai bot serve still works exactly as documented here; for a standalone install see praisonai-bot Migration.This page covers in-process outbound lifecycle hooks (GATEWAY_START, SESSION_START, SCHEDULE_TRIGGER) that fire inside the running gateway. For HTTP inbound triggers that let external services start agent runs via
POST /hooks/<path>, see Gateway Inbound Hooks.Quick Start
How It Works
BEFORE_AGENT and AFTER_AGENT are fired by agent.chat() itself — the gateway does not re-fire them to avoid double-dispatch to plugins.Events Fired by the Bot Runtime
| Event | When | Input Type | Key Fields |
|---|---|---|---|
GATEWAY_START | BotOS.start() | GatewayStartInput | platforms, bot_count |
GATEWAY_STOP | BotOS.stop() | GatewayStopInput | platforms, bot_count, reason |
SESSION_START | First message per user (once per session lifetime) | SessionStartInput | session_id, agent_name, source, session_name |
SESSION_END | /new reset, policy auto-reset, stale reap, reset_all | SessionEndInput | session_id, agent_name, reason |
SCHEDULE_TRIGGER | Scheduled job runs in BotOS._execute_schedule_job. Fires exactly once per job even when multiple BotOS processes share the same store (see BotOS → Multi-Process / HA Deployments). | ScheduleTriggerInput | job_name, job_id, message |
MESSAGE_RECEIVED | Incoming message from platform, before agent dispatch — inbound gate: deny drops the message, modified_input["content"] rewrites it | MessageReceivedInput | platform, content, sender_id |
MESSAGE_SENDING | Before bot sends a reply — outbound gate: deny cancels sending, modified_input["content"] rewrites it | MessageSendingInput | platform, content, channel_id |
MESSAGE_SENT | After bot successfully sends a reply | MessageSentInput | platform, content, message_id |
SESSION_END reason values:
clear— user sent/newpolicy— policy auto-reset triggeredstale— session reaped due to inactivityclear_all—reset_allcalled (clears all sessions)
Common Patterns
Audit Log
Log every gateway and session event to a file with timestamps.Per-User Usage Counter
Increment a counter when a session starts, persist it when the session ends.Scheduled-Job Observability
Push a metric every time a scheduled job fires.Configuration / HookResult
Two events that DO gate:MESSAGE_RECEIVED and MESSAGE_SENDING are real policy control points — HookResult.deny("reason") drops the message and the agent is never invoked; HookResult(decision="allow", modified_input={"content": "..."}) rewrites the content before the agent sees it.
Returning HookResult.deny("reason") from gateway or session lifecycle hooks is best-effort for those specific events (GATEWAY_START, GATEWAY_STOP, SESSION_START, SESSION_END): BotOS emits them but does not gate startup or shutdown on the result.
MESSAGE_RECEIVED is now an inbound gate, symmetric with MESSAGE_SENDING on the outbound side. A hook can drop (deny) or redact (rewrite content via modified_input) an inbound message before agent dispatch. This works consistently across sync and async adapters (Telegram, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Email, AgentMail) — no async def required. See Hook Events → Message Events.BEFORE_TOOL or BEFORE_LLM hooks.
Exception —
MESSAGE_RECEIVED is now a real gate. Since PR #2589, returning HookResult.deny(...) from MESSAGE_RECEIVED drops the inbound message, and HookResult(decision="allow", modified_input={"content": "…"}) rewrites it in place before the agent sees it. See Inbound Message Gate.Best Practices
Keep lifecycle hooks lightweight
Keep lifecycle hooks lightweight
Gateway and session hooks may run inside an async event loop. Avoid blocking I/O or heavy computation — use fire-and-forget coroutines or thread pools for slow operations.
Don't raise from a hook
Don't raise from a hook
Emission is wrapped in
try/except inside the bot runtime, but unhandled exceptions from your hook function are logged at debug level and swallowed. Return HookResult.allow() even on internal errors to avoid silent failures.Use agent_name to disambiguate multiple agents
Use agent_name to disambiguate multiple agents
When one
BotOS runs multiple bots (each with a different agent), the agent_name field on every event identifies which agent the event belongs to. Key your per-agent metrics on event_data.agent_name.Key per-user state on session_id, not platform user IDs
Key per-user state on session_id, not platform user IDs
Platform user IDs differ between Telegram, Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp. Use
session_id from SessionStartInput / SessionEndInput as the stable key for per-user state across platforms.Related
Inbound Message Gate
Drop or redact incoming messages before the agent sees them
Hook Events Reference
Complete event reference with all input types and fields
BotOS
Multi-platform bot orchestrator that emits these lifecycle hooks
Hooks
Hook system concepts: registries, decisions, and matchers
Session Management
How per-user sessions are managed across platforms

