Chat

Chat is your main interface with sideBar. You can ask questions, work through problems, or give instructions, and sideBar can use Skills to act on your behalf.

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Starting and Managing Conversations

Your conversations are listed with auto-generated titles and a message count so you can tell them apart at a glance. They’re organised by date and you can tap any conversation to open it. Swipe right on any conversation to rename it, or swipe left to delete it. You can also ask sideBar to rename a conversation for you. For now, it only does this when you ask directly. That can be the current chat or another saved chat by title or context. If more than one chat seems to match, sideBar asks a follow-up before it renames anything. To start a fresh conversation, tap New and you’re off!

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Sending Messages

Type your message and tap send. Replies stream in as they’re generated, so you see words appear progressively rather than waiting for the whole response. A Thinking… placeholder appears first while sideBar thinks about your request. If the latest eligible failed assistant response can be retried, that bubble shows a retry icon next to the error pill. Retry removes the failed response from the conversation and starts a fresh assistant attempt in its place. If you enable Assistant reply notifications in Settings, sideBar can also alert you when a reply is ready while your device is away. Tapping the notification opens the conversation that received the reply. You can attach files to any message. Attachments move through three states before the message is ready to send:

• Uploading: the file is transferring; you can cancel at this stage
• Queued: the upload finished and the file is being prepared
• Ready: the attachment is processed and the message can be sent

Any attached files are then stored in the Files section of the app. If an attachment fails, you can retry it or delete it and try a different file. To copy any message, tap the copy button once and the content goes to your clipboard. The clipboard clears automatically after 30 seconds, so copied text doesn’t linger longer than you’d want.

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Skills in Action

When sideBar uses a Skill to answer your message, a skills pill appears in the response. Each skills pill shows:

• Its name (e.g. web search, notes lookup)
• Its status: running, success, or error

While a skill is active, the skills pill shows its name and current status at the top of the response. Multiple skills can run within a single response, so sideBar can do several things at once to answer your question.

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Context sideBar Receives

Every message you send includes context sideBar uses to give you more relevant, grounded responses. You don’t need to state any of this, it’s included automatically.

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What sideBar knows automatically

Your device sends a few pieces of environment context with every message:

• Date and time: the current date, time, and your timezone
• Location: your current location (if you’ve granted permission), from city level down to country
• Weather: current conditions at your location, including temperature, wind, and precipitation
• Device: your operating system (iOS, macOS, etc.)

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What sideBar brings into every conversation

Beyond environment context, sideBar also draws on:

• Your profile: name, pronouns, age, job title, employer, and home location from your account settings if you’ve shared it
• What you have open: if you have a note, website, or file open in the app, sideBar can see its content and use it in your conversation
• Recent activity: notes, websites, files, and chats you’ve worked with today
• Your tasks: a snapshot of your current tasks list. What’s overdue, due today, and what’s due tomorrow
• Your personalisation settings: your communication style, working relationship, and sideBar’s identity and soul. See Personality and Settings
• Relevant skills: sideBar dynamically selects which of your enabled skills to include based on your message, so only what’s useful is loaded

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Starting fresh

The very first message in a new conversation includes a short introduction: your name, pronouns, age, OS, and job, so sideBar already knows the basics before you’ve typed anything.

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Offline

Your existing conversations are cached and readable without a connection. You can browse them and switch between them while offline. You can’t send new messages until you’re back online. The composer stays available, but sending waits for a connection.

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Keyboard Shortcuts