Chat

How the chat pane behaves: the session rail, the composer, and how the transcript renders.

Session rail and side chat

While you watch a running session, the Gateway shows the model's latest safe preamble immediately as the session headline. When a utility model is available, it can replace that headline with a richer compact status digest after enough activity accumulates. Chat carries the result in a session rail: its compact pill shows the live digest, while the expanded rail shows the assessment, plan progress, pull requests, elapsed time, and a read-only Side chat thread. The rail can expand once when a run becomes stuck or needs input, and done or failed runs keep a frozen “finished” time based on the final digest. On wide chat panes the expanded rail docks as a 400 px right column; on narrower and mobile layouts it remains an overlay.

Side chat answers questions about the selected session and its project without entering or interrupting the main agent run. On the first question, the Gateway lazily loads a bounded visible snapshot of the selected session before starting the utility model. If history is temporarily unavailable, the question stays visible with Retry instead of being treated as an empty session. Side chat uses read-only access to the target session's history/search and agent workspace. Its bounded thread is held in Gateway memory, is restored when you switch sessions in the Control UI, and is cleared by the rail's trash button, a session reset or deletion, Gateway restart, or idle expiry. It never enters chat.history, and private reference context is not stored as operator dialogue. Open it with Shift-Command-S on Apple platforms or Ctrl-Shift-S elsewhere, or type /btw or /side in the main Control UI composer and press Enter to open the rail and focus its question box. Selecting /btw from the slash menu does the same. Add a question after either command to send it to Side chat; focus moves to its question box when the request finishes. Other clients keep their existing BTW behavior.

Opening Side chat, reopening its panel, or selecting its tab focuses the question box. If you focus another input or keep typing while Side chat loads or answers, that newer input keeps focus.

The Control UI keeps the latest 24 Side chat turns, including failed questions. Sending a follow-up keeps earlier failures in order; Retry resends that question in place. Failed questions stay in the current pane through a reconnect, but are not persisted across a page reload.

The question box wraps and grows like the main composer; Enter (or your configured send shortcut) asks the question, and Shift+Enter adds a line. Highlighting text in a chat message offers Ask in side chat, which opens the rail with a quoted draft ready to edit.

Highlight text and choose Add to chat to attach a comment to the main composer. The optional comment field starts on one line, grows to five lines, then scrolls internally. Confirm or press Enter to save; Shift+Enter adds a line. Saving keeps your existing draft and does not send a message.

Saving leaves a small, filled comment marker beside the selected passage. Click that marker, or the pencil in the comment count's hover preview, to reopen the same editor beside it. Save or Enter saves changes; Cancel or Escape discards the edit; and the trash button deletes the comment. Hover, keyboard-focus, or click the composer's comment count to open its preview. Deleting one comment keeps the remaining list open; Escape, a click outside, or moving the pointer away dismisses it. The count's Remove all comments action clears pending comments in one click and returns focus to the composer without showing a notification. Cleared comments cannot be undone. The clear action appears on hover or keyboard focus and stays visible on touch. Clearing pending comments preserves ordinary attachments, the message draft, and comments already sent in the conversation. Archiving another split pane leaves the current comment editor and keyboard focus in place. Saved comments and their source markers follow the composer's existing draft and queue recovery behavior. When you send, each comment is attached as a text file containing the selection, comment, and source message reference; its draft marker is removed. Hover, keyboard-focus, or tap the sent comment count to read its selection and comment in a compact, scrollable preview. Sent comments remain read-only. Press Escape or tap outside the preview to dismiss it.

The headline owns that run's sidebar subtitle instead of heuristic live activity. It is shared with the official iOS and Android session lists. A final done or failed digest remains visible while the session is unread, then the row returns to its normal work subtitle.

Session observation is enabled by default. Safe preamble headlines do not require a utility model; the utility model only owns richer assessments and terminal summaries. In Settings > Appearance > Sidebar, you can turn observation off gateway-wide, inspect the resolved small model and its provenance, or choose automatic routing, disable utility tasks, or select an explicit agents.defaults.utilityModel. The equivalent config controls are gateway.controlUi.sessionObserver: false and agents.defaults.utilityModel: "".

Session links in messages

Session links in messages open inside the Control UI. This includes agent: keys, root-relative chat URLs, and URLs on the current origin or the Gateway's public origin when its applied configuration is loaded. Hovering a link shows the session card when the session is known locally. Unknown or ambiguous session references remain navigable without a card; links to other origins keep normal browser behavior. Document-relative hrefs are never session links; file references such as src/utils/foo.ts and qa-café/index.md retain workspace file handling, including Unicode names and percent-encoded Markdown link destinations. Explicit Markdown file links also support spaces, emoji, and punctuation in filenames; for example, [Read notes](notes/caf%C3%A9%20note.md) opens the workspace file. Bare CSV filenames in authored links, such as [Read inventory](inventory.csv), and code spans also open the file preview. Plain-text and inline-code file detection stays conservative to avoid turning prose into links.

While composing text with an input method in model search, Enter, Escape, and arrow keys stay with the input method. They do not select a model, clear the search, or move the highlighted model until composition finishes.

When authentication status is available, each provider heading in the chat model picker says how that provider is signed in: API for an API key (or an explicitly selected API-key account), the plan name for a provider with one subscription, and Subscription for a provider with several. With several subscriptions, the heading adds the email of an explicitly selected account when the Gateway supplies it, and the Account rows show each account's email; automatic selection shows no account identity. Hover a truncated heading to read the full text.

Suggested tasks

Suggested task cards offer Start in a new session and Start in a new worktree. Both start the task in the background and keep your current conversation and draft open. The card disappears after the task starts; select the new session in the sidebar when you want to follow its progress. Start in this session runs the task in the current conversation.

Before starting a worktree, OpenClaw checks that the suggested folder is a Git repository with a commit. If it is not, the card keeps the prompt and lets you select a registered project or enter the correct repository path. Select Start in a new worktree again to continue; no child session is started for an invalid source folder.

Composer capability menu

Select + beside the chat composer to open attachments and session capabilities in one menu:

• Skills enables or disables individual skills for this session.
• Connectors enables or disables configured MCP servers for this session. A session tag marks values that differ from the inherited configuration. Browse connectors opens the Plugins page on Discover.
• Web search enables or disables managed web search plus native OpenAI and Codex search for this session.
• Manage plugins opens the Plugins page.

These controls are sparse session overrides, like the model and thinking settings in the chat header. A capability with no override inherits the current agent or global configuration, and OpenClaw applies the resolved values when the next run materializes its tools and skills. The N session overrides pill in the composer footer reopens the menu; select its clear action to remove all capability overrides in one click.

When tools.web.search.enabled is false, Web search stays off in Chat and New Session. The disabled control explains the global setting. If a session has an older enable override, selecting the control clears that override while search stays off. An explicit session disable remains saved.

Video files selected in Chat or New Session show a small local frame preview with a play badge beside the filename. The slot keeps its size while loading. If the browser cannot decode the video promptly, the play icon remains. Removing the attachment releases its preview; generating the preview does not upload the video.

In Connectors, administrators can select Add MCP server… and choose a scope. This session saves the server definition globally but disabled by default, then enables it only for the current session. Everywhere saves the definition enabled globally. Transport, authentication, and other server-definition fields are always global. Session policy can override server enablement and deny individual tools through Tool access.

Tool access lists a connector's tools once a run has discovered them. Before that, it explains why the list is empty rather than reporting zero tools: a newly added server has not connected yet, a connected server has not finished listing its tools, or the runtime catalog predates a config change. Sessions that run on the Codex harness keep their MCP connections inside Codex, so their tools do not appear here.

Capability toggles stay disabled until the Gateway, session, and runtime config are loaded, and read-only operators cannot change them. Adding a server requires administrator access. See Connect MCP servers for the Settings, CLI, and config paths.

Emoji shortcodes

In Chat and New Session, type a colon followed by an emoji name, such as :smi, to see a compact list above the shortcode. The list sizes to its matches and stays inside the viewport. Use the up and down arrows to choose a match, then press Enter or Tab to insert it. You can also click a match. Escape dismisses the suggestions without changing your draft. Selecting an emoji does not send the message.

Typing a recognized complete shortcode, such as :smile:, inserts its Unicode emoji directly into your draft. Code spans and code blocks, URLs, escaped shortcodes, and unknown names stay literal. Existing messages are not rewritten. You can still paste emoji or use your operating system’s emoji keyboard; there is no separate emoji picker in the composer.

JSON in chat

Completed JSON objects and arrays in assistant messages and code fences share a Tree view with expandable nested values and a Raw view of the original source. Copy copies the source in either view, preserving duplicate keys, large numbers, and escape sequences. Raw keeps the usual long-code preview, reveal control, and word wrapping.

Unfinished streaming fences, invalid JSON, and JSON beyond the tree rendering budget stay readable as source. User-message fences and passive previews remain plain code without interactive controls.

Chat behavior

When you send a message, the model picker keeps your selected model visible with a small starting indicator until the Gateway confirms the model handling the turn. If a fallback takes over, the label updates to that model without changing your saved selection. A turn with no known selection still shows Model pending.

New Session shows the agent's known default model while the model catalog loads. Model choices are cached in memory for the current connection, agent, session, and account, so reopening a picker or returning to a draft can show them immediately. Catalog and account changes invalidate these copies; reconnecting loads current choices again. Reopening a picker after a reported cooldown expires checks readiness again. A catalog refresh keeps existing controls visible, and the Gateway still validates the model and account when starting a run. Repeated changes while a model lookup is pending are collected into one follow-up lookup for the latest choices.

Catalog refreshes update the open conversation's model and context facts without reloading unrelated session lists. The shared session store applies lifecycle row snapshots to existing active members locally. Membership or configuration changes and events without a row snapshot refresh the affected lists through its paced event scheduler.

Chat refreshes its available commands after skill selections or session settings change. Repeated changes share one pending refresh per conversation and connection; if a read is already running, one follow-up read picks up the latest changes. Older results cannot replace the current command list.

If a New Session model lookup does not finish within 30 seconds, the controls show Models unavailable. Open the model picker to retry; your draft stays in place. A retry waits for the earlier lookup to finish before starting more work, and its 30-second deadline includes that wait. Reconnecting clears pending lookups from the previous connection.

When you open an existing session, the conversation appears before supporting panels and pull-request details load. You can start typing as soon as its identity is resolved, while the transcript still shows its loading skeleton. The same composer keeps your draft and focus when the conversation appears. You can send ordinary messages and attachments while history loads: the message enters the outbox immediately, leaving the composer ready for your next draft. The open chat confirms its current session and conversation branch before delivery continues automatically. Switching chats keeps queued messages tied to their original conversation. If history fails to load, the queued message stays available while you resolve the history error. Goals and other slash commands wait for history; /stop and /approve remain available. The initial task progress read reserves only its card slot; the transcript and composer stay available.

When you open a short chat link, identity prepared during the current connection can make the composer ready sooner. The original link stays in place until the session lookup confirms the same conversation and its current title.

Background refreshes for saved sidebar filters, groups, automation status, and the Inbox wait until the conversation appears. Task lists, task suggestions, and the progress card then refresh after the transcript paints. Opening a task panel, changing a filter, or opening a group-targeted New Session remains immediate.

Panes share outbox recovery for the same conversation. Activity in another conversation does not restart that recovery; reconnecting checks every saved outbox.

On wide desktop panes, a compact rail of horizontal marks sits in the transcript's left gutter. Hover for a short message preview, or click a mark to jump to that message. Tab focuses the rail; arrow keys move between marks, Enter or Space jumps, Home and End select the endpoints, and Escape dismisses the preview. At rest, all marks are identical 8 × 2px strokes at 12px spacing. They stay faint; marks for messages currently visible in the transcript light up together as you scroll. Hovering a mark grows it to 32px and lights only that mark in text color, with progressively shorter strokes across three neighbors on either side. The other marks keep their resting colors. Outside that hover range, widths stay fixed. An empty message preview shows “Preview unavailable.” Each visible user message has a mark, and assistant messages from the same run share one mark. Tool calls, results, and progress alone do not create marks. An assistant mark jumps to the first currently displayed response in its run and previews the latest displayed response. Its identity stays stable as streaming output becomes persisted history, and its current-position highlight follows later response content in the same run. The rail covers loaded history; messages without run identity retain their transcript grouping. Long rails scroll internally within 45% of the viewport height, with fades only at ends that hide more messages. Scrolling the transcript keeps the current mark visible; you can also scroll the rail to explore other messages. The rail stays hidden on mobile, in narrow or short panes, and when your saved message width leaves too little gutter space. A jump briefly tints the target message with a soft background, fading over 1.2 seconds without a border or ring. Reduced motion disables mark transitions and shows the target tint statically for one second.

Session dashboards and the Background tasks rail follow the selected conversation's agent, including when multiple agents each use a global session. Split panes keep their owners separate; panes showing the same agent and conversation share dashboard updates.

Automatic session titles describe the topic or intended task in your first message. They are generated separately from the agent's work, so a title is not a completion status or a report of tool access. Existing titles and manual names are left unchanged; click a title to rename it.

Worktree creation waits up to 30 seconds for a title, then proceeds while naming finishes in the background. A late title still updates the session without renaming its existing Git branch. Concurrent naming requests share the same work; if that request fails, a waiting dashboard request retries once. If both model routes fail, the session uses a two-word crustacean-themed name.

Collapsed tool rows keep the tool label visible and truncate long summaries with an ellipsis. Tool and subagent activity rows use the same text size and weight. Running subagents show Subagent beside an animated indicator; terminal rows show Subagent finished, Subagent failed, or Subagent cancelled. Subagent previews and their hover text flatten Markdown into a single plain-text line, including unfinished emphasis in live updates. Open the subagent details for a compact activity feed with formatted assistant text, grouped tool calls, and timestamps. Expand a tool row to inspect each command, path, or query. The panel shows current progress above the feed; finished tasks show their outcome and duration. Show earlier loads history without moving the entry you were reading. New activity follows the bottom only while you are already there.

Tool activity summaries count the operations inside a workflow rather than counting its wrapper again. Execution calls show the agent-provided purpose when available; titles describe intended work, while results determine success or failure. Recorded child calls appear under their operation instead of as separate peer rows. Expand the operation to inspect its children, then expand a child for its command, full output, and reported exit status. Tool input retains the wrapper's source and output. Collapsed operations include failures from their children, even when the wrapper or later calls succeed. Error messages and diagnostic paths stay inside the expandable tool details. Nested relationships use recorded call metadata from the same run and survive reloading; calls without an available, unambiguous parent stay separate. Untitled command previews flatten line breaks and truncate long commands; expanded details retain the original source.

A turn that fails before producing any reply leaves a durable notice in the thread. Failed and timed-out turns also show the available failure reason in the sidebar's compact summary and run-error tooltip, including while a session refresh is still catching up.

Chat error banners, including cloud runner failures, show short messages in full. Use Copy error beside Details in the header to copy the complete diagnostic received by the UI, even while collapsed. Details appears only when the complete diagnostic adds information beyond the preview, such as additional lines or text shortened for the preview; repeated lines and whitespace-only differences do not add details. Open it to read and select the complete diagnostic. The disclosure works with Enter or Space; the expanded text wraps long lines and can be scrolled with the keyboard. Copying does not open or close the details, and neither copying nor expanding an error retries the failed operation. Retry and other recovery actions remain separate from the disclosure.

When an active run compacts the conversation while your next message is being prepared, OpenClaw follows the verified continuation automatically, even if the earlier run finishes before preparation does. This keeps the original message and send identity without displaying a retry error.

Run-error banners offer Refresh to reload the conversation without resending a message or replacing your draft. If the conversation changes before a message can run and dispatch cannot verify a safe continuation, the banner explains that the message did not run and asks you to refresh before sending it again. The original diagnostic remains under Details. OpenClaw does not automatically redirect that message into a replacement conversation.

ClawHub recommendation cards

Ask to find or install a plugin or skill, such as “Find the WhatsApp plugin”, to let the agent search ClawHub. The agent uses available tools and skills first; it suggests cards for explicit discovery or installation requests, or when a needed capability is missing. Routine tasks, tool errors, and permission fixes do not call for a catalog search. When the message tool is available, it can present up to three matching cards in the conversation.

If you use the coding tool profile, include "message" in tools.alsoAllow (for example, tools: { profile: "coding", alsoAllow: ["message"] }). Existing deny rules still apply. See Tool access configuration.

Select a card to open its listing inside the Control UI: plugins open in Plugins, and skills open in Skills. A plugin's Install button opens the existing installation review; a skill's Install button opens its details. Dismiss dismisses the card from the current view.

An installed capability shows a green checkmark and Installed. This means the plugin package or linked skill is present. A plugin may still need to be enabled, configured, or connected to an account before the agent can use it. The card checks the current installation status; select Status unavailable · Retry if that check fails.

The agent requests cards through message with a capability query:

{  "action": "send",  "clawhub": { "query": "whatsapp", "kind": "plugin" }}

query is required; kind can be plugin or skill. Omit kind to check plugins first, then skills if no official plugin matches. Omit channel and target to reply to the current Control UI conversation. ClawHub supplies the official designation, and the Gateway checks installation status; the agent cannot assign those badges. A search with no official match or an unavailable catalog returns an explanation in chat.

Source previews and copying code

Long clipboard text appears as a file-sized card in the composer and a compact chip in the transcript. Its label shows the first 30 characters of a plain-text excerpt, with HTML and Markdown formatting removed. Empty or unavailable excerpts show Pasted text. In the transcript, chips sit above the text bubble alongside other attachments; multiple chips share a row and wrap when needed. Click the composer excerpt or icon, or a transcript chip, to open the existing attachment side panel and copy the original text, preserving markup, line breaks, and indentation. The excerpt and chip also support keyboard activation. Select Show in text field on the second row inside the composer card to return its text to the draft without opening the side panel. The composer side panel also offers the same action and removal. Messages containing only comment or pasted-text chips use a transparent shell. Newly uploaded text files remain file cards, even when their names resemble pasted-text attachments. Older history without origin metadata recognizes text/plain attachments named pasted-text-<digits>.txt as pasted text.

Select Open on an uploaded text attachment to read it directly in the Files side panel. Plain-text attachments, CSV, and JSON preserve line breaks and indentation. Markdown attachments render as documents with interactive code blocks. When an open attachment refreshes with unchanged text, its code blocks keep your expansion and wrapping choices after loading. A different attachment or changed text starts with fresh controls. Long previews scroll inside their file tab; switching tabs preserves your reading position. HTML files (.html, .htm, or text/html, including MIME parameters) render as a sandboxed page by default. Source and Preview share the same filename tab and slim toolbar. Same-origin HTML attachment previews accept UTF-8 content up to 2 MiB; other text attachment previews remain limited to 256 KiB. Unsupported, external, oversized, or unavailable attachments keep their original Download action. Cross-origin HTML attachments are download-only.

Self-contained HTML can use inline CSS and JavaScript under the default scripts sandbox setting. The page runs on the existing separate-origin sandbox host, not in the Control UI document. It receives no agent-prompt, tools, or dashboard APIs. The global strict setting disables document JavaScript while retaining the same sandbox resource policy and descendant-frame restrictions; trusted does not give ordinary HTML files access to the Control UI origin. Relative assets are not served from the file's directory, and external resources remain subject to the sandbox's default content security policy.

Workspace file reads and edits retain their existing 256 KiB limit. For workspace HTML, Edit, in-file search, and explicit file:line navigation open Source. Switching back to Preview renders the latest unsaved editor text without saving it. Switching views preserves the editor, undo history, and draft; switching file tabs preserves each file's mode and unchanged page state. A reopened unsaved draft can be saved directly from Preview, including the same conflict detection and Reload/Overwrite actions as Source. A preview transport failure shows Retry without retrying in a loop, and Source remains available, including when the optional preview cannot load.

View Raw Text opens a Source view that keeps Markdown notation literal, including nested code fences. The raw-text action disappears while that view is open. Decoded text artifacts use the same literal preview. Copy code preserves the code's leading whitespace and final newline when present. Indented Markdown code blocks also work at the start of a message and remain literal while streaming, including blank lines within the block.

Completed top-level code blocks keep your expansion and wrapping choices while later paragraphs stream into the same assistant reply. Replacing the message or correcting earlier content starts a fresh view.

Copy URL in browser tab cards also works on plain HTTP connections where the browser does not provide its Clipboard API.

If the browser rejects a text clipboard write, starting another text or image copy cancels its delayed fallback. Code blocks replaced during streaming and Mermaid diagrams whose source changes also cancel that fallback. This does not cancel native clipboard writes that the browser has already accepted.

Markdown tables

Markdown tables scroll horizontally within the conversation. Copy table copies tab-separated cells, and Expand table opens a larger view. If copying fails, the button clears any earlier success checkmark. In Chat, workspace file and session links work in either view, including Enter and Space keyboard activation. Following a link closes the expanded view so you can use its destination.

The Ask OpenClaw panel supports table scrolling, copying, expansion, and web links. Its session links open with a click or Enter. Space does not activate those links, and workspace-file references do not open a preview.

Mermaid diagrams

Use a mermaid fenced code block in chat. The Control UI renders it as a diagram automatically:

```mermaidflowchart LR  Gateway --> Worker  Worker --> State```

Open the Diagram options menu in the top-right corner to switch between the diagram and source or choose Expand diagram for the image viewer with zoom. The copy button appears on hover or keyboard focus and stays visible on touch screens. It copies the original Mermaid text. Diagram colors and fonts follow the current UI theme.

An unfinished streaming fence stays readable as code. Rendering starts when the closing fence arrives or the response finishes. Invalid or overly complex diagrams keep their source visible with an error; correct the syntax or simplify the diagram. Diagram source cannot run scripts or click handlers, load external images, or add custom CSS to the Control UI.

Renderer loading or timeout errors instead suggest reloading the dashboard and checking proxy authentication. The renderer runs in an isolated frame, so its assets/mermaid.min-*.js and assets/frame-*.js requests do not send SameSite=Lax or SameSite=Strict cookies. Behind a cookie-authenticated reverse proxy, those static asset URLs must be reachable without those cookies, including under any configured gateway.controlUi.basePath. Check the browser Network panel for blocked requests or redirects to a login page. Keep authentication on the dashboard and Gateway APIs; any proxy exception should cover only these static renderer assets. Reload after correcting the asset access rules.

Hosted embeds

Assistant messages can render hosted web content inline with the [embed ...] shortcode. The iframe sandbox policy is controlled by gateway.controlUi.embedSandbox:

{  gateway: {    controlUi: {      embedSandbox: "scripts",    },  },}

Absolute external http(s) embed URLs stay blocked by default. To let [embed url="https://..."] load third-party pages, set gateway.controlUi.allowExternalEmbedUrls: true.

Widgets created by show_widget load through the authenticated Gateway connection in every sandbox mode, including while settings are loading. In strict mode, their content remains visible but scripted interactions are disabled.

While a widget loads, a subtle shimmer reserves its space without displaying loading text. With reduced motion enabled, the placeholder stays still.

The core show_widget tool renders self-contained SVG or HTML directly from a tool call. The browser and supported native chat clients advertise the inline-widgets Gateway capability, and the resulting Canvas document remains available when chat history reloads. Channel plugins such as Discord Activities can register contextual presenters behind that same tool. Channel-originated runs without an eligible presenter or inline client do not receive it.

Chat transcript layout

Suggested-task cards show their short summaries in full. Unusually long summaries scroll within the card, and Show instructions expands the complete task prompt. In short windows, the card body scrolls while the header and Start controls stay visible.

Use the mouse wheel or trackpad over the composer or its surrounding space to scroll the conversation while the footer stays pinned. Pull requests, persistent notices, task progress, and the composer reserve their own space below the transcript. When this context grows tall, it scrolls above the writing surface so the draft and send controls remain reachable. Long drafts, task progress cards, and menus keep their own scrolling when their content overflows. At the footer's edge, the wheel continues into the conversation. On touch devices, swipe the transcript or footer to scroll that region.

Scrolling down at the end keeps the final reply above the pull request bar and composer as images or other message content finish resizing. Scrolling upward keeps your reading position instead.

Task progress cards are enabled by default. Toggle Show task progress cards in Settings → Appearance → Chat to hide or show the composer card in this browser. Hiding it does not stop agent work or clear saved progress.

The task progress card above the composer collapses after deliberate upward scrolling settles. Returning to the end and progress updates leave it collapsed; completion can reopen it only while you are already at the end. Manual choices are remembered per session. Continued scrolling after a manual reopen uses a higher threshold, and a second reopen keeps it open for that visit and task. See Task progress cards for gesture thresholds, manual-choice scope, and reset behavior.

Streaming output and layout adjustments keep reading mode intact. A message from another participant pauses following and preserves your current position, even when you were at the end. Typing indicators do not move the transcript. Sending a message from this pane resumes following your response; a send from another browser, including one signed in as you, does not count as a local send. Scroll back to the end or select Latest to resume following explicitly. Assistant text stays visible as it streams and becomes saved history, without a reply entry fade or slide.

Completed replies can show a compact Sources strip when their web links match recorded web_search or web_fetch results from the same run. Select a title and domain card to preview its Search snippet or Page excerpt, then use Open source to open the recorded page. Previews reuse retrieved content without fetching pages again. Site icons use the existing Automatically Fetch Link Favicons preference and Gateway icon loader, with a globe when disabled or unavailable. Session links and GitHub issue or pull-request links keep their dedicated previews instead of appearing again in the source strip. Citation-only results keep a link and show No excerpt available. Uncited results, failed tools, and results from other runs are not included. Source cards require run identity in the transcript and follow tool-activity visibility. They are hidden while a run is active or transcript search is filtering messages.

In completed dashboard turns, commentary, reasoning-only messages, and tool activity share one Worked for… disclosure above the answers. Expanding it shows the activity in its original order; explicit answer segments and visual results stay visible below it. Failed tool results after the last answer stay visible outside the disclosure until a later answer follows them. This is display grouping, not a change to stored history. Live turns, search results, and turns without an answer stay expanded. User messages, forwarded inputs, and structural markers remain boundaries for grouping. Clicking a reply's quoted original opens its containing Worked for… group, scrolls to the original message, and briefly highlights it.

On wide desktop panes, the conversation position rail provides keyboard shortcuts to messages. Tab enters at the current message, or the first marker if no message is current. ArrowUp and ArrowDown move focus; Home and End go to the first and last markers. Enter or Space jumps to the focused message. Tab or Shift+Tab leaves the rail in one step, and Escape closes the preview and returns focus to the transcript. In split view, Escape handles the focused pane before a hovered preview in another pane. Focusing a marker also shows its preview without jumping to the message.

The chat transcript uses a centered readable frame aligned with the composer. Assistant and tool output stay left-aligned while your own messages stay right-aligned inside that frame. In multi-user sessions (for example a group chat relayed from a channel plugin), messages from other attributed participants render left-aligned with the author's avatar, name, and a stable per-identity color, so only the signed-in viewer's messages read as "mine". When two or more attributed participants are present, assistant replies carry a small "Replying to name" marker naming the participant whose message triggered the turn. System entries such as local slash-command output render as centered notice rows without an avatar.

Images and video previews in your own messages appear above any accompanying text, without a surrounding bubble background. Videos use a still frame with a play icon; select the preview to open the video in the Files panel. If a preview cannot load, the attachment card remains available. Hovering media leaves that layout unchanged, and the text keeps its normal bubble color, including any per-identity tint. Assistant videos retain their inline player.

Images use a plain, lightly tinted shimmer while their availability or preview is loading. An image that needs explicit permission keeps a compact Allow image card until you choose to allow it; unavailable images retain their status and retry controls.

Managed image previews retain enough detail for high-density displays. Open an image tile to inspect it immediately in the image viewer; the cached preview stays visible while the original loads and is replaced as soon as the original is ready. Reopening an image reuses the cached original. If loading fails, the preview remains visible. When the message contains multiple images, use Previous image / Next image, the left and right arrow keys, or a horizontal swipe to move through that message's images. Navigation stops at either end and reverses direction in right-to-left layouts. Pinch or use the zoom controls to inspect details; dragging while zoomed pans the image. Press Escape, select Close image preview, or click outside the image to close and return focus to the tile you opened.

Images attached to assistant progress messages appear inline while the task continues and remain visible after reloading the conversation. Remote attachment URLs do not need a filename extension: the Gateway detects the media type and serves the preview through the same authenticated media path used for final replies. Documents keep their file cards.

Computer screenshots retained in the session transcript also load as image previews, including after a reload. Opening a preview shows the saved screenshot in the image viewer. The Control UI retrieves the pixels through authenticated artifact access; computer observations are not automatically sent as outgoing attachments. Historical entries that contain only omission metadata keep the Omitted from history card.

In automatic visible-reply mode, this includes standalone MEDIA: lines in model-authored commentary committed to the transcript, not just final replies. Only references captured before transcript hooks and retained in that commentary are eligible; hook-added references remain text, and normal media access and live run/session checks still apply. Message-tool-only delivery uses message(action=send) with structured attachment fields instead. Tool/plugin output and streamed block payloads must also use structured fields. See WebChat commentary compatibility.

Messages forwarded by sessions_send render as left-aligned speech bubbles with a From attribution row above the message. Known senders, including the current agent, retain their agent identity. Unknown or unlisted senders show no avatar beside the bubble or in the attribution row, and no empty inline avatar space remains. The message column stays aligned with neighboring messages. Select a linked source to open its session; hover it to see session progress. Each source session has a stable bubble tint. Forwarded messages without a known source session show the source agent when available, or a generic forwarded-message label. The receiving agent's own replies remain flat text.

Your name is hidden beneath your own messages when no other human participant is known in the session. Shared conversations keep sender names, including while searching the transcript. Web messages do not show a "via Web" label; other recorded client sources remain visible.

Subagent transcripts

Subagents use the same task transcript view, including subagents run by the Codex harness. Select a task to read its messages, thinking, and tool calls; select Show earlier to load older history. Task activity refreshes the view while the subagent runs. The generic fallback label is Subagent.

In the Chat task panel, tasks with a readable current child session load the complete text of capped assistant replies automatically. The preview stays visible while loading. If recovery fails three times, the panel keeps the preview and offers Retry. Task transcripts without a session address keep the text supplied by their runtime.

The viewer reads history from the runtime that owns it. New native subagent tasks retain their original history source when later turns replace the parent's native thread. Changing the parent session or account can make that history unavailable. If the runtime or its parent binding is unavailable, the panel shows an error with a retry action. Tasks without readable history retain their prompt and output inspector.

Automation task transcripts stay tied to the recorded run, including after its temporary continuation session is removed or the automation runs again. If that recorded transcript is unavailable, the viewer reports an error instead of showing a newer run. Select View transcript on a row in the full Tasks page or under Automations → Run history to read that exact run without opening its temporary session. Open session remains a separate action on the Tasks page.

The full Tasks page displays the supplied transcript. Core session transcripts are currently capped at 8,000 characters per text block. The Chat panel's full-text recovery may be unavailable after a temporary session is removed; loading earlier messages does not recover a capped reply's missing text.

Chat message width

Drag the side-panel divider to resize a task's transcript in Tasks. Messages and expanded tool input reflow within the panel, keeping tool-card borders visible. The side-panel divider follows the pointer and arrow-key direction in both left-to-right and right-to-left layouts.

Wide-monitor users can override the transcript width under Settings → Appearance → Chat → Message width. The preference stays in that browser's local storage. Supported forms include plain lengths and percentages such as 960px or 82%, plus constrained min(...), max(...), clamp(...), calc(...), and fit-content(...) width expressions supported by your browser. Invalid input shows an error and keeps the last saved width. Clear the field to restore the default.