Chats

A chat is a plain conversation with the agent, outside any project. Use it for things that have nothing to do with your codebases: how to patch KDE for FreeBSD, what a regex does, a draft of an email. The agent works in a throwaway folder, with no repository, no branch and none of your project’s context weighing on the conversation.

Start a chat

The direct way is + on the Chats section in the sidebar. On the phone, tap New chat at the top of the sessions list or + on Chats.

Mod+N (Cmd+N on macOS, Ctrl+N elsewhere) and New Session in the command palette open a new session on the side you used last: a chat if your last new session was a chat, otherwise your project. You can switch it to Chats before you send the first message.

Where chats live

Chats have their own section at the top of the sidebar, above In work and your projects. They’re sorted like other sessions, newest activity first, and pinned chats stay on top. In Timeline mode the section shows the three most recent chats; Show more loads the rest. The section folds away like any other.

On the phone, Chats sit above the project list in the sessions sheet.

What a chat can and can’t do

Every chat gets its own empty folder, so the agent can still create and edit files there: a script, a quick prototype, a converted document. What a chat doesn’t have:

git status, branches or worktrees
moving into work: chats never show up in In work
implementing a plan in a new session
starting from a Linear issue

Notes, todos and plans work. All chats share one set, separate from your projects.

A chat stays a chat. There’s no way to move a finished chat into a project; if a conversation turns into real work, start a session in the project and bring the useful part along.

Archive and delete

Archive a chat to hide it from the list. Delete it to remove it for good, together with its folder, once no other session (a fork or a subagent) still uses that folder.

Where the folders are

Chat folders live in ~/.config/openchamber/chats, one dated folder per day. If you moved OpenChamber’s data with OPENCHAMBER_DATA_DIR, they’re under that folder instead. To keep chats somewhere else, set OPENCHAMBER_CHATS_DIR; see Environment Variables. That matters when OpenCode runs as a different user and can’t read your home folder.

VS Code has no chats. The extension always works in the folder you have open.