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User Guide

AI Chat

The AI Chat is a conversational assistant available from anywhere in the app. Open it with the chat button in the top bar; it slides in as a side drawer and stays with you as you navigate, so you can keep a conversation going while you work.

Chat is one of several AI surfaces in MisterShell. The others are Quick Assist (one-shot help next to a resource or a config diff), in-session assistance (guidance that follows along as you type in a terminal), and the Run Agent automation action. All of them are optional — nothing is sent to a model provider until you invoke it.

What you can do

  • Ask questions about your estate in plain language — inventory, recent changes, health, sessions.
  • Pick which agent answers, when more than one is available to you.
  • Attach files to a message — images, PDFs, and text files (via the attach button or by pasting with Ctrl+V).
  • Watch the assistant work: the tools it calls appear as expandable cards inside the reply.
  • Stop a reply while it is still being generated.
  • Keep multiple conversations, return to earlier ones, and delete the ones you no longer need.
  • Resize the drawer, or expand the chat to full screen.

How it works

The assistant answers using the tools its agent is allowed to call — reading inventory, looking up changelog entries, querying events, and running read-only diagnostics. What an agent can reach is set by an administrator, so different agents may have different scopes. Your conversations and the AI’s activity are attributed to you and visible under Account → My AI Usage.

Common tasks

Start a conversation

  1. Click the chat button in the top bar.
  2. If a picker is shown on the welcome screen, choose a Chat agent. The picker appears only before the conversation starts — a conversation keeps its agent for its whole life. Background, Quick Assist, and Session Assist agents cannot be used to create a normal chat, even through the API.
  3. Type your question and send it. Use the attach button (or paste) to add images, PDFs, or text files.

Switch conversations — or agents

Previous conversations are listed in a sidebar on the left of the chat drawer; click one to reopen it, or use its delete action to remove it (with confirmation). To talk to a different agent, start a new conversation and pick the agent on the welcome screen — you cannot switch agents mid-conversation.

Keep an eye on your usage budget

When a token budget applies to you, a usage bar at the top of the drawer shows how much of it is used. Hover it to see the exact token count and when the budget resets.

Permissions

  • Use AI Chat and Quick Assist: app.ai.execute. If you do not have it, their buttons do not appear.