Chat

A box is a directory of your data, kept under version control with a full history of changes (using git); a card is a markdown file with a structured header; the agent is the coding agent (Claude Code or Codex) that operates the box. Chat is the everyday way you talk to it.

What it does for you

• Streams the agent's reply as it is generated, instead of making you wait for the whole answer.
• Lets you resume a past conversation, reopen a chat from its card, or pick up the most recently active one.
• Scopes a chat to wherever you started it: a card you were reading, a directory ("place") in the box, or a page you just clipped from the web.
• Lets you quote a passage out of any card into what you're typing.
• Recovers a message that failed to send instead of losing it, offering to retry it, put it back in the box as a draft, or discard it, and keeps an unfinished draft across reloads.
• Marks a message the agent never received (for example, one still waiting when the box restarted) as not delivered, at the place you sent it, with Resend and Discard. A message that is only waiting behind the current reply is shown as queued, not as failed.
• Searches what was said in your chats, not only their titles: a search field on the Recent chats panel returns one row per chat with a highlighted snippet, and opening a result lands on the matching message.
• Lets you mark a chat done (the menu says "Archive conversation"). It stays resumable and moves out of the Recent chats list into an "All chats" view. Deleting a chat is a separate, permanent act: the transcript and the chat's card are removed, while cards and files the conversation produced, and earlier committed versions in git, stay.
• Titles chats for you, starting right after the first exchange or two rather than overnight, retitling as they grow, and keeps a title you set by hand.
• Shows the agent's short progress remarks between its tool steps, live and later in the transcript, so a long turn does not look silent.
• Keeps an image you paste or upload as a file the agent can use (crop it, read text from it, file it into a card), as well as showing it to the agent.
• Lets you pick the model for one chat, from the engines the box has enabled or a model the owner added through OpenRouter, and marks a chat running above or below the box default.
• Can come back to the same chat later, up to twelve hours out, to check on something ("ring in this chat in 20 minutes"), optionally with a sound or a spoken announcement. For anything further out, or to reach you when the chat is closed, the agent sets a reminder on your phone instead (notifications.md), and tells you the time it set so you can correct a misread "next Tuesday".

What it needs

Nothing beyond the box itself and a working agent login (Claude Code or Codex). See ../install/index.md.

How it works, briefly

Every conversation is a durable chat card, so it survives reloads and is browsable like anything else in the box. The agent acts inside a turn and asks you a question when it is unsure rather than guessing; its mid-turn work (files touched, background notes) is visible in the transcript. Chat runs on demand, when you send a message, not on a schedule. The box screen sends a thought to whichever chat it fits (quick chat); see web-interface.md. A box with no working agent login shows a notice in place of the message box and sends the owner to the Admin page to connect one.

Limits

The not-delivered mark is kept for at most 24 hours, and a crash (as opposed to a restart) loses a queued message without leaving the mark. A chat that cannot be resumed (for example, an old session format) says so rather than silently starting a new, disconnected one. The documentation does not describe a message-editing feature; a sent message stands as sent. Chat search matches the words as typed and does not understand meaning, by choice, so that your transcripts are not sent to an outside service to build it; it covers only chats on the machine the box runs on, and only the text you and the agent wrote, not tool output or attachments. Searching chats from the box-wide search is not built.

Go deeper

../reference/cards/chat.md, ../reference/cards/chat-thread.md (history only), ../reference/chat-voice.md, ../reference/narration-mode.md, voice.md