Writing & mentions

The composer is a rich-text editor. You type normally and it formats as you go; behind the scenes it stores clean Markdown, so your messages stay portable.

Formatting

A formatting toolbar sits above the composer:

• Bold, italic, bullet list, numbered list
• More (…) opens the rest: Heading 1/2/3, strikethrough, inline code, code block, and quote.
• An emoji picker — or just type a :shortcode (like :tada:) and pick from the suggestions.
• Saved messages (the bookmark) — your reusable snippets; see below.
• Queue — agent channels only: hold the message until the agent finishes its turn. See Agent channels.

You can also type Markdown directly (**bold**, - item, > quote, `code`) and it renders live. Fenced code blocks are syntax-highlighted, a ```mermaid block renders as a diagram, and pipe-syntax tables render as real tables. A bare link to a GitHub or GitLab pull request, issue, or commit is compacted to a tidy chip. So is a link to another chat message — press ⌘/Ctrl + / to search for one and insert it, or hover a message and click the copy icon next to its timestamp, then paste: either way it renders as a small pill naming the author — hover it to read what they said, click it to jump there. You can also select text inside a message and click the floating Copy link chip: that link carries the quote, and opening it flashes the selected passage. (Normal copying — ⌘/Ctrl + C or the right-click menu — is untouched.)

Pasting Markdown works too: paste a chunk of Markdown and its headings, lists, links, tables, and code blocks arrive as real formatting, not literal ## characters. Prefer the raw text? Paste with Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + V, or press Ctrl/⌘ + Z once to undo the conversion. Copying out of the composer gives you Markdown back, so text round-trips cleanly.

Saved messages

Text you send often — a standing instruction to your agent, a weekly check-in — can live on the Saved messages button (the bookmark) in the toolbar. Write the message as usual, open the list, choose Save what's in the composer… and give it a label. From then on, open the list and click an entry to drop it into the composer, formatting and all; the ✕ beside an entry deletes it. Before you've saved anything the list just says Nothing saved yet. Write a message, then save it here to reuse it.

Saved messages are yours alone — nobody else sees them — and one saved from a channel's composer is offered in that channel. You can keep up to 50, each with a label of up to 80 characters and a body of up to 4,000.

Keyboard shortcuts

Use ⌘ on macOS or Ctrl elsewhere:

(For safety, links are limited to http, https, and mailto addresses.)

Clicking a link that leads outside the chat app — a website, a card or commit chip — opens it in a new tab, so your conversation stays put. In-app links (#channel chips, message pills, help pages) open in place.

In the @, #, @/, and : autocomplete popups, use ↑/↓ to move, Enter or Tab to choose, and Esc to close.

Mentioning people — @

Type @ and start a name to bring up the channel's members. Keep typing to filter, then pick one (arrow keys + Enter, or click). Their name appears as a chip in your message.

Mentioned people get notified. They get a mention badge in their sidebar, and — if they're away and the server has email set up — an email with a link to the message. You won't notify anyone by re-saving unchanged text, and you're never notified about your own mentions. See Mentions & notifications.

Referencing channels, cards & commits — #

Type # to reference things across the workspace. The suggestions come in sections:

• Channels — public channels and the ones you're in (never DMs). Clicking a #channel chip opens that channel.
• Cards — cards from your project boards, searchable by title or number; typing digits (#12) jumps straight to that card number. The chip shows the card's number, with its title on hover.
• Commits — recent commits of the channel's bound repository (when one is bound in the channel settings). The chip shows the short sha, with the commit subject on hover.

Pasting a link works too: paste a card's link (the copy button in the card dialog), a board link, a commit page link, or a branch link (a repository's tree page) and it collapses to the same chip right in the composer — and renders as one for every member who can see it. Card and commit chips resolve per viewer — someone who isn't a member of that board or repository just sees the plain link.

References stay correct over time: chat stores the id (or the durable URL), not the label — a renamed channel or card shows its current name/number everywhere it's referenced.

Workspace files — @/ (agent channels)

In an agent channel, type @/ to search the agent's workspace (the container has to be running). Pick a file and it inserts an @file:path chip. The harness expands those chips before the turn — up to five, capped, and only paths inside the workspace — so you don't have to paste the file body yourself.

The listing is the workspace root. Nested paths still work if you type them as @file:src/main.rs.