Motivation
While an agent is working, I often want to ask a quick question about its progress, a decision it made, or a detail in its report. Asking in the main chat can interrupt or clutter that conversation; starting a separate regular chat adds an entry to history for something I may only need for a few minutes.
Proposal
Add a temporary side chat that branches from the current conversation, similar to the side-chat flow in Codex:
- On creation, take a point-in-time snapshot of the parent chat's context. The side chat continues from that snapshot, so it can answer questions about the ongoing work or report. Later messages in the parent chat should not silently change the side chat's starting context.
- Keep the side chat separate from the parent: asking there should not interrupt or append messages to the main conversation.
- Do not add temporary side chats to the regular chat history. Automatically expire unpromoted chats after a reasonable period of inactivity (for example, 24 hours; the exact TTL is open to discussion).
- Show a Make permanent / Save as chat action immediately in the side chat. This promotes it to a normal chat, preserves its messages and inherited context, and makes it appear in the regular history.
The temporary state and expiry should be clear in the UI, so users know to promote a useful discussion before it disappears.
Related to #406, but different: that issue proposes a new persistent chat for continuing work with another agent/model; this one is for disposable questions alongside the original conversation, with optional promotion.
Motivation
While an agent is working, I often want to ask a quick question about its progress, a decision it made, or a detail in its report. Asking in the main chat can interrupt or clutter that conversation; starting a separate regular chat adds an entry to history for something I may only need for a few minutes.
Proposal
Add a temporary side chat that branches from the current conversation, similar to the side-chat flow in Codex:
The temporary state and expiry should be clear in the UI, so users know to promote a useful discussion before it disappears.
Related to #406, but different: that issue proposes a new persistent chat for continuing work with another agent/model; this one is for disposable questions alongside the original conversation, with optional promotion.