Chatting with a Coworker

Every conversation is between you and one Coworker. Conversations are called threads, and they are listed on the left side of the Chat page. Chat follows the Coworkers switch on Settings, then Features; when that switch is off, Chat is absent.

Start a conversation#

You can start from three places:

• On the Coworkers page, select Chat on a Coworker's card.
• On a Coworker's details page, select Chat with followed by the Coworker's name.
• In the top navigation, select Chat, then select Start a new chat and pick a Coworker. The picker lists Coworkers as cards; use Search by name, role, or practice… to narrow the list. Retired (Sunset) Coworkers are not listed, because they cannot be chatted with; their earlier threads stay available through Filter.

To start a fresh thread at any time, select Start a new chat at the top of the Threads list. It opens the Coworker picker, so you choose which Coworker to talk to. Start a new chat is always available, including while a Coworker is still replying in another thread; that reply keeps going, and it is waiting for you when you reopen the thread.

Once a Coworker is selected, the top of the page shows its profile image (or its initial) with its name and role. After you send the first message, the top of the page shows a small version of the image beside the conversation title; the same image appears in the thread list and in the Coworker picker. If the Supervisor added conversation starters, they appear first, under Try asking, as buttons. Select one and its text is placed in the message box, ready for you to edit; nothing is sent until you press Enter or select Send. Below the starters, What I do lists the Coworker's responsibilities and What I don't do lists its scope boundaries, both written by its Supervisor. Type in the message box at the bottom, which reads "Ask" followed by the Coworker's name and "something" in a new chat, and "Message" followed by the Coworker's name once the conversation has started, and press Enter, or select Send. Press Shift and Enter to start a new line without sending. A message can be up to 32,000 characters. A new thread takes its title from your first message, shortened if it is long, or from the file name when the first message is only an attachment.

Continue a conversation#

Select a thread in the Threads list to reopen it. The whole history loads, and you can keep typing where you left off. If the Coworker is still working on a reply when you open the thread, the reply keeps arriving.

Each thread row shows its title, the Coworker's name and how long ago the last message was sent. When you have no threads, the list shows a short message saying there are no conversations.

While a Coworker is working#

The page shows a working indicator with the elapsed time, the number of tool calls so far and the tokens used. You can keep typing while the Coworker works:

• Select Queue to hold your message. Only one message can be queued at a time; queuing another replaces it. A line above the box shows what is queued, either "Queued — will send after this reply" or "Queued — will steer this task", with a Withdraw button to take it back. A message that is delivered while the Coworker is still working is tagged "sent while still working".
• Select Stop to end the reply in progress. The page then shows "Canceled."
• When the box has text, Stop and send now ends the reply and sends your text straight away as a new message.
• While the thread shows "condensing older messages…", both Stop buttons are unavailable. They work again as soon as the Coworker finishes condensing.

When a Coworker pauses a long task#

A Coworker can work through many steps in a single reply. If it finds itself repeating the same action without making progress, it stops and tells you so, and asks how you would like to proceed. If a task is very large, the Coworker may also pause after a great deal of work in one go and say it is pausing. In both cases the reply is an ordinary message in the thread. Send another message, for example a different approach or a smaller piece of the task, and the Coworker carries on from there.

When a reply does not come back#

If the Coworker cannot finish a reply, it says so in the thread. When the reply took too long, the message reads "This reply took too long to come back. Please try again."; any other failure reads "Sorry, something went wrong generating a reply. Please try again."

Select Retry under the message to run the reply again. Retry appears only under the latest failed reply, and only while nothing else is being generated in that thread. The Coworker answers your original message again; it does not appear twice in the thread, and the failed attempt is removed. Anything that happened during the failed attempt is not kept, so the Coworker starts that reply from the beginning.

Reading a reply#

Replies are formatted text. When a reply involved tool work or reasoning, a Show work button appears under it; select it to see each tool call with its input and output, and Hide work to collapse it again. When the Coworker looked something up in its knowledge bases while answering, a Show sources button lists the pages it found. Each source shows the document name, the line range when there is one (for example "lines 12–30") and a snippet of the passage; select a source to read the full document in the context pane. A reply where the Coworker did not look anything up has no sources. The cost of a reply appears next to the feedback buttons.

Cards in a reply#

Sometimes a Coworker needs something from you before it can continue, and shows a card in its reply instead of asking in text: a request for a credential, a request to enable a connector for it, a prompt to connect your account on a system, or a request for your OK before it uses one of your connected accounts. Answer the card where it appears. The Coworker then continues by itself, and that follow-up work appears as a new reply with its own Show work button. See Secrets, Connectors for a Coworker, Connecting your accounts and Approving a request. A request for your OK stays visible in the thread while the Coworker waits for you.

Long conversations are condensed automatically to keep them running smoothly. A divider reads "Earlier messages were condensed to keep this conversation running smoothly."

Conversations removed under the retention policy#

Your administrator can choose to remove the content of conversations that have had no activity for a set period. Such a thread stays in the Threads list with the title Removed conversation. Opening it shows "This conversation was removed under the retention policy." Its attachments, artifacts and tool details read Removed under the retention policy. The message box is replaced by "This conversation can't take new messages because its content was removed under the retention policy. Start a new conversation to keep working." Select Start a new chat to continue. Removed content cannot be restored. You can still archive the thread. See Conversation retention.

Rename a thread#

Open the thread, then select its title in the header above the conversation. The title becomes a text field. Press Enter or click away to save, or press Escape to cancel. If you clear the title and save, the thread keeps its previous title.

Archive a thread#

1. Select the archive button on a thread's row (its tooltip reads Archive).
2. In the Archive conversation? dialog, select Archive.

The thread is removed from your thread list.

Filter the thread list by Coworker#

Select Filter at the top of the Threads list and pick a Coworker. The list shows "Filtered by" followed by the Coworker's name; select Unfilter to see every thread again. Use Hide to collapse the list completely, leaving only a small Show threads icon button at the top left, and select that button to open it again.

Chatting on a phone#

On a narrow screen the conversation fills the full width of the page. The Threads list and the context pane are menus: select the Show threads icon at the left of the conversation header to slide the thread list in from the left, or the Show context icon at the right to slide the context pane in from the right. Select a thread to open it and close the menu; select Hide, tap the dimmed area outside the menu or press Escape to close it.

When you arrive with no conversation open, the Threads menu is already open, with Start a new chat at the top, so you can pick a thread straight away. Close it to see the empty chat, where Start a new chat lets you choose a Coworker. The Show context icon appears once a conversation is open.

Who can chat, and who can see a conversation#

Only you can open and continue your conversations, and your Threads list shows only your own. A Coworker's Supervisor can open a conversation with that Coworker in read-only form when they review the Coworker's work, so treat chats as supervisable.

Whether you can chat with a Coworker depends on its phase:

Phase	Who can chat
Interview	Its Supervisor
Internship and Apprenticeship	Its Supervisor and members of its current cohort
Full-time	Everyone in the company, unless the Coworker is scoped to Teams, in which case members of those Teams and its Supervisor
Sunset	Nobody; a retired Coworker cannot be chatted with

If you are not allowed, the page tells you why, for example that the Coworker is in Interview with supervisor-only access.

Conversations that a Coworker's trigger started on its own schedule do not appear in your Threads list. Select Recent runs on the trigger, on the Coworker's details page, to open one; the Triggers card is shown to the Coworker's Supervisor and to others who can chat with the Coworker. See Triggers.

The same is true of the conversation a workflow run keeps with its Coworker: it never appears in your Threads list. You read it on the run's page. See Reviewing a run.