Rich messages

Beyond plain text, Lane.Chat can send rich messages: structured bubbles that the widget renders natively and that degrade to sensible fallbacks on channels without rich support. Rich messages are authored in Flows (the send_rich_message action).

There are six rich types:

Type	Renders as
markdown	Formatted markdown text
card	A card with title, description, image, and buttons
buttons	A group of tappable buttons
carousel	A horizontally scrollable set of cards
form	An inline form the visitor fills in and submits
link	A link preview with title and description

The wire envelope

Every rich message is delivered as a normal chat message with three coordinated fields:

• message_type — the rich type (card, carousel, ...).
• content — the fallback text (shown in list previews and on channels without rich rendering).
• metadata — { schema_version: 1, type, fallback_text, payload }, where payload holds the per-type shape.

{
  "type": "message",
  "message_type": "card",
  "content": "Pro plan — $29/mo",
  "metadata": {
    "schema_version": 1,
    "type": "card",
    "fallback_text": "Pro plan — $29/mo",
    "payload": {
      "title": "Pro plan",
      "description": "Everything in Starter, plus priority support.",
      "image_url": "https://cdn.example.com/pro.png",
      "buttons": [
        { "text": "Choose Pro", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "select_pro" } },
        { "text": "Learn more", "action": { "type": "url", "url": "https://example.com/pricing" } }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Payload shapes

Field names below are the ones the widget renderer reads. Human-visible text fields also accept a {lang: text} map for per-language copy (see Template variables).

card

{
  "title": "Pro plan",
  "description": "Priority support and higher limits.",
  "image_url": "https://cdn.example.com/pro.png",
  "buttons": [
    { "text": "Choose Pro", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "select_pro" } },
    { "text": "Pricing", "action": { "type": "url", "url": "https://example.com/pricing" } }
  ]
}

buttons

Every button carries an action object. type is one of postback (fires a button_click flow event carrying value), url (opens url), phone, submit_form, or next_step. layout is auto (default), 1col, 2col, or 3col.

{
  "text": "How can we help?",
  "layout": "1col",
  "buttons": [
    { "text": "Sales", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "sales" } },
    { "text": "Support", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "support" } }
  ]
}

carousel

{
  "cards": [
    { "title": "Starter", "description": "$9/mo", "buttons": [ { "text": "Pick", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "starter" } } ] },
    { "title": "Pro", "description": "$29/mo", "buttons": [ { "text": "Pick", "action": { "type": "postback", "value": "pro" } } ] }
  ]
}

form

{
  "title": "Book a demo",
  "fields": [
    { "id": "email", "label": "Work email", "type": "email", "required": true },
    { "id": "size", "label": "Team size", "type": "select", "options": [
      { "label": "1–10", "value": "s" },
      { "label": "11–50", "value": "m" }
    ] }
  ],
  "submit_label": "Request demo",
  "submit_action": { "type": "submit_form", "flow_step_id": "..." }
}

See Forms for how submissions are ingested.

link

{
  "url": "https://example.com/changelog",
  "title": "What's new",
  "description": "This month's product updates."
}

markdown

{ "markdown": "**Heads up:** maintenance tonight 22:00–23:00 UTC." }

Button clicks and submissions

• Button postbacks travel back over the WebSocket message frame in metadata.button_click ({ button_id, button_value, button_text }) and trigger the button_click event in your Flow.
• Form submissions are posted to POST /v1/forms/submit — see Forms.

Cross-channel degradation

On channels without native rich rendering, Lane.Chat degrades automatically: Telegram and Slack translate buttons/cards to their native interactive formats, and any channel without an equivalent falls back to content (the fallback text). If a rich payload is malformed but has usable fallback text, the message degrades to plain text rather than failing.