Chat Interface

The Chat tab is the primary AI interaction mode — a conversational interface with multimodal support, message history, and export capabilities.

Sending Messages

Press Enter or i to enter Editing mode
Type your message
Press Enter to send

The TUI sends your message to the configured AI model and displays the response.

Message Types

Messages are color-coded by role:

Role	Color	Emoji	Description
User	Cyan	👤	Your messages
Assistant	Green	🤖	AI responses
System	Yellow	⚙️	Status and system messages

Each message displays:

[14:32:05] 👤 [gpt-4o-mini] How does ownership work in Rust?
[14:32:08] 🤖 [gpt-4o-mini] Ownership is one of Rust's key features...

Media Attachments

Attach media files to your messages for multimodal AI interaction:

Switch to the Media tab (m or 3)
Select files with Space or Enter
Press b to return to Chat with files attached

Attached media appears with a 📎 prefix in the sidebar. When you send a message, the selected media is included as context for the AI.

Chat Layout

The chat area is split into two panels:

┌──────────────────────────┬────────────────┐
│                          │ 📎 Media       │
│   Message History        │ 🤖 Agents      │
│                          │ 📊 Stats       │
│                          │ • Total: 24    │
│                          │ • User: 12     │
│                          │ • Chars: 8,432 │
└──────────────────────────┴────────────────┘

Left (70%) — Scrollable message history
Right (30%) — Sidebar with attached media, active agents, and conversation statistics

Conversation Statistics

The sidebar shows real-time stats:

Total messages — Count of all messages
User / Assistant / System — Breakdown by role
Total characters — Sum of all message content
Average length — Mean characters per message
Media attachments — Count of attached files
Active agents — Number of running agents

Chat Sessions

The TUI supports multiple chat sessions through the ChatManager:

Session Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`auto_summarize`	`false`	Auto-summarize when context grows too large
`context_window_size`	4,096	Max tokens in context window
`enable_media_analysis`	`true`	Analyze media files with vision models
`temperature`	0.7	AI response temperature
`max_tokens`	None	Max tokens per response
`system_prompt`	None	Custom system prompt

Auto-Summarization

When enabled and the conversation exceeds the context window size, older messages are automatically summarized into a single system message, preserving recent context.

Search

Search through your conversation history:

Press Ctrl+F to enter Search mode
Type your search query
Press Enter to search
Use ↑/↓ to navigate results
Press Esc to return to Chat

Search is case-insensitive and matches against message content.

Export

Export your conversation for sharing or archival:

Shortcut	Format	File
`Ctrl+E`	Markdown	`conversation_export.md`
`Ctrl+J`	JSON	`conversation_export.json`

Markdown Export

# AetherShell Conversation Export

**Model:** gpt-4o-mini
**Messages:** 24
**Exported:** 2024-01-15T14:32:05Z

---

**👤 User** *14:30:00 [gpt-4o-mini]*
How does ownership work?

**🤖 Assistant** *14:30:03 [gpt-4o-mini]*
Ownership is a set of rules that govern...

JSON Export

{
  "exported_at": "2024-01-15T14:32:05Z",
  "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "How does ownership work?",
      "timestamp": "2024-01-15T14:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Clear History

Press c (Normal mode) to clear all messages
Press Ctrl+L to clear the conversation
This removes all messages from the current session

Tips

If no AI model is configured, the TUI shows a warning with setup instructions
Messages are limited by max_messages (default 1,000) — oldest messages are dropped
Auto-scroll keeps the latest messages visible; scroll up manually to review history
The model name appears in each message header so you can see which model responded

Keyboard shortcuts

AetherShell Documentation