Chat

Chat is the primary way you work with Crew. Type a message, and the agent responds with streaming text, live tool calls, and results — all in real time. Attach files, dictate prompts, interact with widgets, or let it run tools autonomously. The experience works the same whether you're in the desktop app, web dashboard, Slack, or the CLI.

1. You send a message — text, a file attachment (@filename), or a voice memo
2. The agent responds — streaming text with live tool calls as they execute
3. You guide the work — approve or reject tools, edit and resend, fork into a new direction, or let Autopilot handle everything

Each chat tab is its own independent session. Sessions share your long-term memory (preferences, lessons, project context) but have their own conversation history and tool-approval state.

Alongside the conversation, a side panel hosts context for the work at hand. It docks to the right or the bottom (toggle from the panel header) — docking to the bottom suits a tall or narrow monitor.

• Project file tree: browse the session's project in the side panel, and edit a file in place without leaving chat.
• Git panel — repository status and commit log, opening automatically alongside the folder tab once a session has a project.
• Browser — the agent's live browsing session, with human takeover. See Browser.
• Session summary — why a session started, what happened, and what's still open. See Sessions.

Opening a Jira link shows the issue's details right in the side panel instead of sending you to the browser. GitHub, GitLab, and Jira issue, PR, and MR links also render inline in chat as chips — an icon plus owner/repo#N.

The transcript renders code changes and files where you are already looking, so you don't switch to another tool to read them.

• Folded diffs: a change starts as a chip with its file name and +N/-M count. Select it to expand the patch. To render patches as plain monospace text instead, turn on Settings → Chat → Plain diffs.
• Inline previews for more file types: video, audio, XLSX spreadsheets (with sheet tabs), DOCX documents, PowerPoint files, and notebooks (with embedded images, highlighted code, and Mermaid diagrams) all render in the transcript.
• Consistent tabs: in-page tab strips use the same pill control throughout the dashboard.

The composer keeps the work context close without taking over the transcript.

• Open the + menu and choose Sketch to draw an image and attach it to your message.
• The footer shows the active project's branch and the number of uncommitted files. The context popover's Auto-compact threshold slider applies only to the current session.
• Choose Collapse the message input from the + menu when you want more room to read. A labeled bar remains in its place so you can bring it back.
• On an assistant reply, choose Share as image to export a branded PNG or prepare an X or LinkedIn post.

When a dashboard view cannot read or save its data, it shows a notice instead of an empty state. Use Retry for a transient problem or Ask the agent to hand the diagnosis to a chat.

A launcher opens by keystroke and names each row's kind, so you can jump to a session, file, or action without a full-corpus scan on every keypress. It ships on by default.