A bstract We discuss unitarity constraints on the dynamics of a system of three interacting particles. We show how the short-range interaction that describes three-body resonances can be separated from the long-range exchange processes, in particular the one-pion-exchange process. It is demonstrated that unitarity demands a specific functional form of the amplitude with a clear interpretation: the bare three-particle resonances are dressed by the initial- and final-state interaction, in a way that is consistent with the considered long-range forces. We postulate that the resonance kernel admits a factorization in the energy variables of the initial- and the final-state particles. The factorization assumption leads to an algebraic form for the unitarity equations, which is reminiscent of the well-known two-body-unitarity condition and approaches it in the limit of the narrow-resonance approximation.