Skip to main content

Use Chat in AI Cockpit Reasoning

Chat keeps the request, agent activity, decisions, and result in one session. Use it when work needs project context, several tool calls, or a result you want to keep refining.

Open Chat​

Select the AI Cockpit icon in the Activity Bar. Choose New Task to start a clean session, or select a previous session from History. Press Ctrl+Shift+A (Cmd+Shift+A on macOS) to move the cursor to the prompt.

Use Open in Tab when the transcript needs more room than the sidebar. The session stays the same when it moves between the sidebar and an editor tab.

AI Cockpit Reasoning Chat with request, tool activity, response, and prompt controls

Chat brings the request, tool evidence, result, and session controls into one view.

Send a request​

  1. Select the agent, model, and reasoning effort below the prompt.
  2. Add only the files, folders, terminal output, Git changes, or images the task needs.
  3. Describe the outcome, the important constraints, and how the result should be checked.
  4. Press Enter to send. Press Shift+Enter for a new line.

Select Stop to interrupt the agent. The transcript keeps what happened up to that point.

Add messages while the agent works​

You can send another message while the agent is still working. The message waits in the transcript marked Queued and runs after the current turn. Until then, edit it or select Delete queued message to remove it.

Read the transcript​

The transcript records your messages, the agent's reasoning, every tool call, and the answer.

  • Tool blocks show commands, file edits, and MCP calls. Choose in Settings → Display whether each kind starts expanded or collapsed.
  • Reasoning blocks show the model's thinking. They can start Expanded, as a short Preview, or as a Headline only.
  • Large pastes are collapsed in your message. Select the pasted block to expand it.
  • Mermaid diagrams render as images. Zoom in, copy the source, or download them as SVG or PNG.

Read the tool results, not only the final summary, before you accept the work.

Find your way in long sessions​

  • Prompt navigator: the marks along the edge of the transcript represent your prompts. Hover over a mark to preview the prompt and select it to jump there. Use First prompt and Latest prompt to go to either end.
  • Search chat: select the search button in the session header, or run AI Cockpit: Toggle Chat Search. Use Match Case, Match Whole Word, or Use Regular Expression to narrow the results.
  • Session header: double-click the title to rename the session. The header also shows the to-do list, an activity timeline you can show or hide, and the generation speed in tokens per second.

Act on a message​

Hover over a message to see its actions:

  • Copy response copies the agent's answer.
  • Fork to new session starts a new session from that point and leaves the original unchanged.
  • Revert to here returns the session to that message. A banner offers Redo until you send a new message.

Respond when the agent pauses​

A question asks you to choose or provide missing information. A permission request asks whether a specific operation may run. Read the displayed details before you answer either one.

See Respond to questions and permissions for the complete flow.

Continue or start again​

Continue the session when the next request depends on its existing context. Start a new session when the work is unrelated. Type / to open the command menu; see Use Chat Commands.