User's guide
Chat
Ask a question in plain words and the answer comes from your own data. Chat holds one conversation, and it reads your days, your tasks, your journal and your writing before it answers. It is the speech-bubble icon in the top corner on the web, and the same speech bubble in the corner of Day in the installed phone app, beside the gear. A browser narrowed to phone width keeps the ? alone and drops the bubble, the way it drops the gear, so Chat there is a wider window away.
AskingSpeak or type, and the answer reads your data first
The microphone button beside the field listens while you talk and sends when you stop, then reads the answer back out loud. It appears in browsers that can take dictation. You can also type into the field and send. A speaker button beside the microphone reads every answer aloud, typed questions included, and it stays where you left it. Your line appears at once. The answer takes as long as the reading takes, usually under a minute, and a quiet line says it is reading your data while you wait.
Chat answers from what is in your account. Ask what is on your plate and it reads your open tasks. Ask how the week went and it reads your days and journal. It can also look things up on the web, for the parts of a question your data cannot answer.
It can also do things you ask for in words: add a task, write a journal line, mark something done. Anything it changes is in the same places you would have changed it yourself, and shows up there immediately.
The threadOne conversation, and it stays
There is one conversation and it stays. Coming back shows it from the latest exchange, next to the field where the next question goes. Chat reads the recent thread when it answers, so a follow-up can lean on what was just said.
What it can reachYour account, and nothing else
Chat signs in as you. It reaches exactly what your account reaches, which is your areas, tasks, journal, streams and documents. It reaches nothing anyone else keeps here, and it cannot see or send photos.
A question that cannot be answered is refused, and the reason appears under the field. The connection may have failed, or your account may have no Anthropic key, which Chat answers on and which Settings → Keys is where you store. Your words stay in the field, ready to send again. A failed ask is never stored as if it went through.