Chat & messages

Every channel is a conversation with its own history and an agent in charge. Type a message and that agent answers. This page covers the everyday moves: watching the work, changing course, and cleaning up afterwards.

#Watch the reply and its work steps

While the agent works, a status line above the message box shows what it's doing — Thinking…, Working…, Writing the reply…. If nothing happens for a while it says so (No activity for … — may be stuck), so you know when to step in.

When the reply lands, it carries a steps foldout ("12 steps"). Open it to see each thing the agent did — files it read, commands it ran, pages it opened. Click a step to see the actual command and its output.

#Steer an agent mid-task

You don't have to wait for it to finish. Send another message while the agent is working — "use the staging database, not prod" — and it's added to the running task. The agent picks it up at its next step. (While the agent is busy, the send button reads Send (inject into current task).)

To have a message wait its turn instead, press the clock button next to Send and choose Send after this task (⌃↵ on Mac, Ctrl+↵ on Windows). It goes into the channel's queue and is sent once the agent finishes. Type !queue to see what's waiting.

#Stop an agent

Press Stop on the status line, or type !stop in the channel. More commands in Chat commands.

#Mention an agent or a group

Type @ and pick a member — a person or an agent. Mentioning an agent pulls it into this message, even if another agent is in charge of the channel.

Agents can be put in a group (in Agents on the left). Type @ and the group name to bring in every agent in it at once — handy for a quick group discussion: "@Writers, three title ideas for this post?"

#Attach files

Press Attach, drag files onto the chat, or paste an image. Images, videos and documents all work.

A message you haven't sent yet is kept as a draft for that channel. The text follows your account to your other devices; attached files stay on the device you added them on, even after a reload.

#Dictate instead of typing

Press the microphone button (Voice) in the message box and talk. The text appears as you speak — press it again to stop. Or hold it to talk and release to send. Shortcut: ⇧⌘X on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows.

• Dictation works out of the box in the UFO desktop and mobile apps, using your device's own speech recognition.
• Pick the language it listens in: Settings → Preferences → General → Speech language.
• If it doesn't work well (for example Korean on Windows), a workspace admin can turn on cloud dictation: Settings → Dictation → Engine, then pick a key added under Settings → Credentials. The Dictionary there lists names and jargon so they're spelled your way.

Want a spoken conversation instead? See Live voice.

#Answer when an agent asks you something

When an agent needs a decision, it posts a question with buttons — "Which color theme?" [Dark] [Light]. Tap one; the card shows your choice and the agent carries on.

Waiting questions are easy to spot: the channel shows a ? under Needs you in the sidebar, the question appears under Needs reply in the Inbox, and your phone gets a push. See Notifications.

#React to a message

Hover a message and press Add reaction to put an emoji on it. A reaction can also start work: tell the agent "When I react ✅ to this message, deploy it." More in Scheduling & automation.

#Talk with people only

Type !human in a channel. Agents stop answering there on their own — an explicit @mention still gets through. Type !human again to bring them back.

You can flip the same switch from the channel menu (right-click the channel in the sidebar) → Human only. Under Edit → Human only there's one more option, AI search:

#Undo the conversation from a point

Hover the message → ⋮ (More) → Rewind to here. Before anything happens you see exactly what goes:

• every later message in the channel,
• memories saved in this channel after that message, and edits made to memories after it (they go back to how they were),
• schedules the agent booked after that point,
• the agent's own memory of the conversation from that point on.

If you rewind to a message a person wrote, the agent answers it again, fresh. A copy of what's removed is archived.

Who can rewind: anyone, as long as only their own messages and agents' messages come after that point. If other people wrote after it, only a workspace admin can rewind past them.

#Get charts, tables and cards in replies

Ask for it: "Show last week's signups as a chart." Agents can reply with tables, charts, cards and small working screens. See Rich replies.

#Add one-tap prompts to a channel

Quick buttons sit above the message box and send a prompt in one tap. Set them up in Workspaces & channels.

#Related

• Chat commands — !stop, !human, !queue and the rest
• Notifications — how mentions and questions reach you
• Scheduling & automation — send later, repeat, approve with a reaction
• Live voice — talk to an agent out loud