Chat: conversations and history

Start a conversation

1. Step 101

   Open a new chat

   Click New chat in the sidebar or press ⌘⇧O. The home page also offers start cards: Just chat, Research, Explore places, Ask the council, Make a file and Ask an agent. Each one opens a chat with the matching tool already on.
2. Step 202

   Write the message

   The composer says Message Akili, or drop an image. Enter sends; Shift+Enter adds a line. Drop or paste an image, attach files, attach a knowledge base, or turn on web search, deep research and thinking from the + menu (see Models and tools).
3. Step 303

   Stop or continue

   While an answer streams, the send button becomes Stop generation. Afterwards, keep typing in the same chat; the model sees the whole thread, including any attachments and knowledge bases you attached earlier.
4. Step 404

   Pick up where you left off

   Every chat you open again from the sidebar loads its full history. If a chat cannot be loaded, the page offers Try again without leaving; if it was deleted or unshared, it says Conversation unavailable and offers to start a new chat.

History and search

The sidebar lists your chats with pinned chats first, grouped under folders and projects when you put them there. The menu on each chat offers Star, Mark as unread, Rename, Pin, Move to folder (or New folder…), Move to project, Tags (or New tag…), Share and Delete. Folders and tags are yours; a project is a shared workspace with its own files and members.

Search your chats

Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K) to open the search dialog. It searches your chats as you type and also lists Go to links for the main areas of the app, so it doubles as a command palette. The sidebar's Search chats entry opens the same dialog.

Find a document

The Find a document page at /search searches your Library, your knowledge bases, your chat attachments and your projects at once; the same document in several places is one result. Switch on the semantic toggle to search by meaning instead of exact words, and each result shows the passage that matched.

Branches

Akili has two ways to explore alternatives without losing anything.

• Branch from here (the Branch action under an answer, or ⌥B for the last answer) copies the conversation from its start up to and including that answer into a brand-new chat. The new chat is labeled Branched from “title” and the original is untouched.
• Alternatives inside one chat. Edit one of your earlier messages, or regenerate an answer, and the previous version is kept as a sibling. Arrows labeled Previous branch and Next branch under the message switch between versions. Editing earlier messages is the Conversation branching setting under Settings → Capabilities, on by default.

Regenerate an answer

The Regenerate action under the last answer (or ⌘⏎) asks again. Its menu, Regenerate with, lists the models you can switch to, a Choose another model… entry that opens the full picker, and two quick adjustments: Shorter and More detail. On models that support it, a Longer reasoning option asks for a deeper answer; when your plan does not include that model the entry reads Included with{plan} and is locked.

The artifacts panel

When an answer contains a file worth viewing on its own (a web page, a Markdown document, a CSV table or a block of code), Akili shows a card with Preview and Open in panel. The panel opens beside the conversation, with viewers for HTML, Markdown, CSV and code, and the conversation stays usable on the other side. The toolbar offers Download, Save to library (and Open library once saved) and a width toggle.

Text documents convert to Word, PDF, Markdown or HTML; spreadsheets to Excel, CSV or PDF; slide decks to PowerPoint or PDF. The Artifacts switch under Settings → Capabilities turns the panel off if you prefer inline answers only.

Citations and provenance

Answers that used outside material end with a Sources list. Web results link to the page; passages from your documents show the document, the page or passage number and a similarity score explaining why the passage was chosen. Inline citation chips sit on the sentence they support, and a citation the model got wrong is shown as no matching source rather than linked to the wrong place.

Provenance badges above an answer tell you how it was produced:

• Searched the web: the answer drew on a live web search.
• Image read by {model}: the chosen model cannot see images, so a helper model described your image and the answer is based on that description. Image could not be read means no helper was available and the image was not used.
• Why this model? on the model line explains whether the model was chosen by you or automatically, and where it ran.

Share a chat

1. Step 101

   Open the share dialog

   Use Share in the chat menu, the Share action under an answer, ⌥S, or press S while the cursor is outside a text field.
2. Step 202

   Choose who can see it

   Only you can see this conversation (the default); Anyone in organization, so everyone in your org can find and view it; or Anyone with the link. The link form is /shared/<token>; copy it with Copy link.
3. Step 303

   Invite specific people

   Enter an email address to grant access to one person, with a permission of view or use. Remove access from the same list at any time.
4. Step 404

   Revoke later

   Switching back to private revokes the link. Settings → Privacy → Shared chats lists every chat you have shared, with the date, and can revoke from there.

Saved prompts and / commands

The Prompts button in the composer holds your saved prompts and the ones shared with the organization. Choose one to insert it, or Save this prompt to keep what you have typed (a title of up to 80 characters and a body of up to 8,000). A prompt can contain variables such as {{TOPIC}}; inserting it opens a small Fill in the prompt form first, and {{CLIPBOARD}} asks you to paste the text to use.

Every prompt is also a command. Type / as the first character of the message and the picker lists matching prompts (and skills, where they are enabled); typing the exact name, for example /summarize, selects it. The picker only reacts to a slash at the very start of the field, with no space after it. ⌘/ opens the same list.

Keyboard shortcuts

Good to know

• If an answer looks cut off: use Regenerate → More detail, or send Continue exactly where you stopped; both are one click in the regenerate menu.
• If you want an answer read out: every answer has Read aloud; it fetches audio from Akili's voice service and Stop reading halts it.
• If you rate answers: the Helpful and Not helpful buttons under an answer are stored with the message. For an agent deployed as webchat, visitors' thumbs-down ratings land in the agent's inbox under Needs review.
• If your memories are locked: a banner reads Your memories and messages are locked when your organization uses a context key you have not unlocked in this session. Unlock it from the banner.
• If you work with an agent: an agent's chat shows a Tools line with its connected servers and knowledge sources, and opening an agent from the sidebar starts a chat at /a/<agentId>.