Team chat

Team chat is for people working around the same project. You can coordinate a review, ask a teammate for context, or share a screenshot without sending another instruction to the agent. Chat messages and agent turns have different jobs: when you want the agent to do something, send a turn in the thread's main conversation.

The rail on every thread

Open a work thread's Team chat rail to talk beside that work. The rail is collapsible, so the agent transcript and the human conversation can sit side by side or you can give the work more room. Everyone with access to the thread can follow the discussion. An unread count appears on the thread row and in the open rail; mentions make it easier to spot conversations that need your attention. Opening the work thread alone does not clear the chat's unread state — open the rail to catch up.

Type @ in the composer to choose a teammate. The mention becomes a link to that person and can call their attention to the message. The chat composer accepts formatted text, files, and images; it also offers an emoji picker and suggestions when you type an emoji name after a colon. You can paste or drop files as well as select them. Unsent text is kept as a draft for that conversation.

Chat sends independently of the agent's run. You can talk while an agent is busy without queueing a new turn. If a teammate's note contains work you want the agent to take on, put that instruction in the main conversation instead.

Channels for the team

Shared teams have channels below their projects in the sidebar. Every shared team starts with a permanent #general for the whole team. Open it for announcements or questions that do not belong to one work thread; its membership follows the team. You can also add a channel for a smaller group and choose its members. A channel is visible to its members, not automatically to every teammate outside it.

Channels use the same composer, attachments, mentions, unread counts, and message actions as thread chat. You can find a channel's unread count beside its name and dismiss it after catching up. Channels suit topics spanning several threads; the rail stays tied to one work thread.

Replies, reactions, and message changes

Reply to a message in its own thread to keep a side discussion together instead of scattering it through the room. The original message shows its replies and any new replies you have not read. Opening a reply thread lets you read and respond there; channels and direct messages can deep-link to an open reply thread.

React with an emoji when a short acknowledgement is enough. You can edit your own message, and an edited message is marked as such. You can also delete your own message where it has no replies. Message actions include Keep unread on someone else's message when you want to return to it later. The read state belongs to you: one person's reading does not silently mark a teammate's conversation as read. Live typing presence shows when others are composing, without posting a half-written message.

Direct messages

Open a direct message from a teammate's avatar or name in chat, from an @mention, or from the sidebar's Direct messages section. A DM is a conversation between the two of you, with its own unread count, composer, replies, reactions, and attachments. You can start one with someone who shares a team with you; if that shared membership ends, you cannot send new messages to them.

What agents see

The agent reads turns in its work transcript, not your team chat rail, channels, or DMs. Agents may separately send thread-to-thread messages when coordinating work across threads; those appear as thread messages in the agent conversation, not as human team chat. The distinction lets you discuss work privately with teammates without accidentally changing an agent's instructions. See teams & collaboration for access and shared-project behavior.