Chatting with Your Agent

Each project has one conversation with the agent. Open a project and start typing — that's it.

How it works

Each message you send can trigger the agent to call tools — searching the web, reading files, writing notes, creating tasks, or whatever else you've enabled in the project.
When the agent searches, one search covers your project's own data at once — updates, files, and everything your apps keep here — and reaches into a connected app's own search (your CRM, mailbox, chat workspace, cloud drive) when your question points there or when you ask it to search everything. It can look for several things in a single search, and every result says which app it came from.
The agent can chain multiple tool calls together to complete a request. You'll see each step as it happens.
Conversations are persistent — the agent remembers what you said and did in the project, across sessions. When a conversation gets long it's automatically summarized so older context stays available without slowing things down.
Responses are resilient — if you close the tab, put your laptop to sleep, or lose connection mid-response, the agent keeps working. Reopen the chat and you'll rejoin the live response (or find it finished and waiting). Only the Stop button cancels a run.
Links the agent shares on their own line show up as link cards — a clickable box with the destination's icon and a readable title. Cards into Avi (an app panel, a settings page) open right in place; external links open in a new tab. A card for a file or a folder always shows that file's or folder's own name.

The agent sees what you're looking at

When you chat with a panel open beside the conversation, the agent knows which panel is focused and what it's showing: an open email or note and how it begins, or which list you're on. Ask about it directly ("what's this note about?", "reply to this") without pasting the content in — typed or spoken. In a voice session the agent also sees the rows and buttons on screen, so it can act on them ("open the third one", "close this"). A few things are handled on the spot without a round trip: navigation ("open my contacts", "go back", "scroll down"), and the view zoom — "zoom in", "zoom out", "bigger", "smaller", "zoom to 150 percent", "reset zoom" — which scales the whole window in 10% steps between 50% and 200% and is remembered per browser.

Getting good results

Be concrete. "Summarize today's GitHub notifications and post an update" beats "check GitHub."
Add project instructions for things that apply every time (see Projects). You only have to say them once.
Use skills when you have a procedure the agent should follow — a multi-step workflow, a style guide, a specific prompt template. See Skills.
Pick the right model for what you're doing. More capable models use more credits but do better on harder reasoning. See AI Models.

Queueing messages

You don't have to wait for the agent to finish before sending your next message. If you send while it's still responding, the message is queued — it shows up below the response with a "Queued" label and sends automatically, in order, as soon as the agent finishes.

Queue as many messages as you like; they send one at a time.
Changed your mind? Click the X next to a queued message to cancel it before it sends.
Queued messages live in your browser tab — closing the tab discards any that haven't sent yet.

Bigger jobs run in the background

Avi does most work right in the conversation, and that includes Word documents and Excel workbooks: drafting a quote from your template, changing wording or a table, redlining a contract, building a budget, adding rows and formulas to a spreadsheet. It brings its Word or Excel know-how to the request and answers in the same reply.

Work that would keep you waiting runs in the background instead, as a job:

Research takes a question that needs real looking.
Anything long that you ask for once, such as going through a folder of files or comparing several vendors.

Avi says so in one line, and the conversation stays free for your next message. A card appears in the chat and shows each step while the job works. When the job is done, the answer appears at the end of that message: the short version first, with Show more for the specifics, and a tile for each file the job created or changed. In voice mode you hear the short version, and a file the job made opens on screen. Jobs never clutter your Automations list. Each one also leaves its result as a line on the project's single Jobs row in Updates, so you can find it again later.

Two kinds of request wait on other people for days, so Avi sets up an automation for each one:

Meetings books meetings with other people.
Requests collects things people owe you.

Their card in the chat keeps itself current, and they report to Updates as they go.

Ask about any result whenever you like and Avi picks it up from there. Avi creates an automation of your own only when you ask for one or the work is ongoing, such as every morning or whenever something happens.

Seeing what Avi found

When seeing beats reading — product photos, pages worth opening, a side-by-side comparison, where each of several things stands — Avi shows it: the things it found, each with its picture, name and a line about it, plus a comparison table and a short note, together. In a written chat it appears right in the reply. In voice mode it appears at the top of your home screen as an update, opened up, and stays in your feed like any other update so you can come back to it. Everything for one request is kept together in a single update.

Things that live in an app — an email, a file, a deal — are shown by opening them in that app instead.

Stopping an in-flight response

If the agent starts doing something you didn't want, use the Stop button in the chat. It interrupts the current run immediately. If you have messages queued, the next one sends once the run stops — cancel them first if you don't want that. In voice mode, if Avi starts on your request while you are still talking, just keep going: Avi works out that the rest belongs to the same request. If it hasn't done anything yet it starts over with the whole thing; if it has already made something, it applies what you added as a change to that work rather than doing it twice. Something unrelated runs as its own request. Say "repeat that" or "say that again" to hear the last thing Avi said once more. Background noise that contains no words is ignored, and so is a stray "um" or "okay" on its own. In voice mode, say "stop", "don't", or "wait" to stop everything — the talking and every request in progress. To only make Avi stop talking, say "stop talking", "be quiet" or "don't talk": the reply is cut, but every request keeps running and you hear its answer when it's done. Screen commands and new requests work while Avi is talking, without interrupting it. Say "mute" to mute the microphone without leaving voice mode — it works while Avi is working or talking too, and whatever Avi is doing carries on — and "unmute" to bring it back. While muted, Avi ignores everything it hears except "unmute". The voice options menu under the orb has the same Mute / Unmute item, and a Microphone entry that opens a list of your inputs (available whether or not voice mode is on): "System default" follows your computer's sound settings, or pick a specific microphone to use in this browser; during a session the list also shows which microphone Avi is listening to right now. If the microphone in use is unplugged, Avi switches to what's left and says so. You can also change the AI model by voice: "switch to Sonnet", "use the Haiku model", "change the model to Opus five" — you don't need to pronounce the name perfectly, and if two models share a name Avi asks which one. In voice mode, every request you speak runs in the background: a ring around the orb shows it's registered, a soft pop plays when you add a request while another is still running, a small circle on the orb shows how many requests are still owed to you — running, or finished and waiting to be read — and Avi is ready for your next one straight away — you can keep talking, even while it's reading you an answer. Whatever it creates or edits for you — a draft, an event, a note, a file — opens on screen the moment it's written. When a request is done, Avi says its answer at the next quiet moment; if the request was to write or change something and it went as asked, it says nothing at all — the app's own chime and the change on screen are the confirmation — unless you also asked it something in the same breath, in which case it reads you the answer. Ask if you want the details. Independent requests run at the same time, and each answers when it is done; a request that builds on the one before it waits for that one to finish. "Stop" stops all of them — the one running, any waiting behind it, and whatever Avi is saying — and so do "stop all jobs", "stop everything", "cancel all requests", and "clear the queue". These are handled by the app on the spot and never reach the assistant; when more than one request was stopped, Avi says "Stopped everything." Say "use the default model" to go back to your org's default. While Avi is working on a spoken request or reading its reply, only screen commands are taken ("open email", "scroll down", "go back"); anything else you say — or any background noise it hears — is ignored without comment, and nothing is queued behind the current request. Voice stays in the project you're in; switch projects from the project menu.

When a message doesn't go through

Sometimes a turn fails outright — the model provider is overloaded, the conversation has outgrown the model's context, or something you attached can't be read. When that happens the chat tells you what went wrong in place, with the underlying error underneath it, instead of leaving a blank reply. Most of these clear on a retry; a conversation that's grown too long is the one to clear.

Sounds

Avi plays a short sound when a reply finishes while you're away from the window, when something fails, when a new update lands in your feed, and when voice mode starts or stops. In voice mode, where your eyes may be elsewhere, it also sounds when something succeeds (an email sent, a draft created), when a confirmation needs you, and when the record you're looking at changes underneath you; in written mode those moments are already on screen, so they stay silent. Turn them off or on for the browser you're in under Settings → General → Sounds. The choice is per browser, so your phone and your laptop can differ.

You can also ask for "some music" in the conversation, spoken or typed, and quiet background music starts and keeps playing whether you are talking or typing; it fades under every voice. "Pause the music", "stop the music", "next track", "skip this song", "quieter", "louder", "set the music to 20 percent", and "what's playing" control it, and it stops when you leave the voice session. "Next track" and "skip the song" only mean the music while it is on; otherwise they reach Avi like anything else you say. Anything Avi understands about the music it can do for you as well, so "put on something calm" or "make the music quieter" in writing works too. Each "louder" or "quieter" is a clear step, and 5 percent is close to silent. Hover the music note beside the orb to see what is playing, pause or stop it, and set the volume. When the music comes from a licensed station, the station decides whether a song can be skipped and there is no going back to the previous one; Avi tells you when it can't. Avi knows when music is on and what's playing, so you can ask about it in the conversation too.

When you ask Avi to show you something in a voice session, what it found takes the place of your updates on the home screen, laid out the same way it is in the conversation, with each page's own picture and icon where the page provides them. Press the back arrow, or say "back" or "close that", and your updates return.

Clearing history

You can clear a conversation's history from the project's chat menu. Useful if you want to start fresh or if the agent's gone off on a tangent. Clearing takes effect everywhere at once — the conversation history lives on the server, so any other tab, device, or voice session on the same conversation starts from the cleared state on its next message. Nothing carries the old history forward.

Task conversations

Tasks don't run on their own, and they don't have their own chats — talk about a task in the project chat (+-mention it to point the agent straight at it). For work that should happen on a schedule, the agent sets up an automation. See Tasks.