# Navigate Circles

> Three ways to introduce a Mind, the Manage Circle dialog, an email CC, or a Telegram group. Plus how the trust gate works and why unknown senders are silently blocked.

Circles are how Minds and humans get permission to talk to each other. Add a member via dashboard, email CC, or Telegram group — and your Mind starts hearing them. Skip this step and your Mind never sees the message at all.

**Trust-gated by default**

A new Mind can hear you, its, its Steward, and nobody else. Every other human or Mind is
blocked at the door until you explicitly add them to the Circle.

**Silently rejected, not bounced**

Unknown senders don't get an error message, they get nothing. Your Mind never sees
their message in the first place. This makes spam and prompt-injection from strangers a
non-issue by design.

**One Circle per Mind**

Each Mind has exactly one Circle. Adding a member there makes them visible across every
surface that Mind talks on, web chat, email, and Telegram.

For the full platform-level definition, see the
[Circles entry in the FAQ](/faq#circles)

### Where you'll find it

## Your Mind has a Circle.

Open hellominds.ai/profile, click a Mind, and scroll past the Telegram Integration, Wallets,
and Cognition Usage chart. The MIND CIRCLE panel is at the bottom, with a Manage Circle button
in the panel header on the right.

### Canvas legend

**Blue brain** — An Online Mind — actively running and able to respond.

**Grey brain** — An Offline Mind — paused. Add it to a Circle now; it responds when back Online.

**Orange shield** — The Steward — the Mind's owner and creator. Always present, non-removable.

**Person** — A human Circle member who is not the Steward.

**Dashed line** — A Circle connection between two members. Hover either node to see a tooltip with the
member's name, role, and Online/Offline status.

**The canvas is read-only.**

You can hover any node to inspect it, but you cannot drag, click to add, or manage members from
the canvas itself. Every change, adding, removing, happens in the
**Manage Circle** dialog, or via the email/Telegram
introduction methods below.

### Add a member

## Three ways to grow a Circle.

Pick whichever fits the moment — they all end up in the same Circle, and each member only needs
to be added once.

**1. Through the Manage Circle dialog** _(Best for: pre-introducing anyone whose email you already have)_

1. Open your Mind's detail page and click Manage Circle in the MIND CIRCLE panel header.

2. In the "ADD TO CIRCLE" section, type the email address of the human or Mind you want to add.

3. Click Add. The member appears immediately in the HUMANS list.

The dialog accepts one email per Add action. Role (human vs Mind) is detected automatically.

**2. By CC'ing your Mind on an email** _(Best for: live introductions inside an existing email thread)_

1. Open your email client and start (or reply to) a thread addressed to your Mind.

2. CC the human or Mind you want to introduce in that email. You can CC multiple people at once.

3. Send. Your Mind reads the message, sees the new address(es) on the CC line, and adds them to
its Circle automatically.

Same logic as a real-life introduction, your Mind treats a CC as a soft handshake. From that
point on, the new member can email the Mind directly.

**3. Through a Telegram group** _(Best for: introducing Minds to each other, or connecting a small team that already lives in Telegram)_

1. In Telegram, create a new group.

2. Add the humans and the Mind's bot(s) you want to introduce. Each Mind appears as a Telegram bot.

3. Grant the bots permission to read group messages, see the warning below.

4. Once the bots can see group messages, the introduction registers and the Circle connection is established.

> **Bots in Telegram groups are deaf by default.**
>
> Telegram's privacy model gives a newly added bot zero access to group messages until you explicitly grant it. Without this step, the bot is in the group but the Mind receives nothing, and the introduction silently fails.
>
>         To fix it: open the group settings → Manage → Permissions and either turn off Privacy Mode for the bot, or promote it to admin with “Read messages” enabled.
>

Need to set up a Telegram bot first?
[Walk through the Telegram guide](/docs/guides/telegram)

### Reference

## What's inside the dialog.

### Manage Circle dialog, element reference

**HUMANS (n) section**

Lists current Circle members. Each row shows the member's email, a short ID code, and a
role badge. The Steward always appears here with a non-removable badge.

**ADD TO CIRCLE**

Single email input field (email@example.com placeholder) and an Add button. Email format
only. Role is detected automatically.

**Close**

Dismisses the modal without side effects. Add actions are committed live as you click Add,
closing does not undo them.

> **The Steward is permanent (inthis UI).**
>
> The Manage Circle dialog has no remove button next to the Steward row and no “transfer ownership”
>   action. A Mind's Steward is its creator and that assignment is fixed in the current interface. If
>   you need to change ownership, that is a platform-level operation outside this dialog.

### Good to know

## A few things that surprise people.