A chat is how you talk to an agent in Tori: a structured conversation with the same agent CLI you would run in a terminal, drawn as prompts, replies, tool cards and diffs, with Tori’s controls around it. A chat tab starts as a draft, just the composer, and becomes a live session on the first message.
The parts of a chat
From top to bottom:
- Banners, when something needs saying across the whole chat: a usage limit reached, too many chats running, a rewind, another chat in the same worktree.
- The status strip: what the session is doing, the files it touched, its figures, and the session menu. See Reading the transcript.
- The transcript: your prompts, the agent’s replies, its thinking, tool calls, diffs, notices and Tori’s own notes. See Reading the transcript.
- The plan, when the agent publishes one, pinned above the composer. See Permissions and questions.
- The lane strip, when the agent has subagents. See Subagents and background work.
- The queue, when messages are waiting for the next turn. See Steering and the queue.
- The composer, with the model, effort and mode pills under it. See The composer and Models, effort and modes.
Everything about chats
| Page | Covers |
|---|---|
| Starting a chat | New chats, the launch menu, session history, chat or terminal, renaming and deleting sessions |
| The composer | Keys, mentions, session, project, space and pull request references, slash commands, attachments, recall, drafting in the editor, quoting |
| Steering and the queue | Messages sent mid-turn, and editing, reordering, steering or deleting queued ones |
| Models, effort and modes | The model palette, thinking effort, permission modes, agent switches |
| Permissions and questions | Answering prompts and questions, deny with feedback, tori ask cards, the plan |
| Reading the transcript | Every kind of row, tool cards, hunk reverts, reading a reply aloud, the status strip, the session menu, MCP servers |
| Subagents and background work | Lanes, background tasks, prompts from subagents |
| Rewind and fork | Going back to a prompt, reverting files, forking a conversation |
| Limits and spending | Spending ceilings, usage limits, Resume at reset, too many chats |
| Accounts and usage | Several logins, quota bars, per project agent rules |
| Agents in Settings | Installing, updating, models, files and plugins per agent |
What differs between agents
Claude gets everything on these pages. The other agents run over the Agent Client Protocol, which has no way to steer a turn, fork a conversation, ask a structured question or report cost, so those parts are missing for them and Tori says so where they would be. The full comparison is in Supported agents and adapters.
Notifications
Settings > Chat > Notifications decides when a chat reaches you while you are looking elsewhere:
| Setting | Default | When |
|---|---|---|
| Notify when a session needs you | On | A permission prompt, a question, a spending limit or a failing check. Never for the session on screen |
| Play a sound when a session needs you | Off | The same moments, as a sound Tori plays itself |
| Notify when a chat finishes its turn | Off | A turn that ran to its end. Not one you stopped or one that failed, and not the chat on screen |
| Play a sound when a chat finishes its turn | Off | The same moments, as a sound |
| Show the needs you count in the menu bar | On | Beside Tori’s menu bar icon, the sessions waiting on you that you have not looked at yet, the same number as the Dock badge |
Each sound has a play button so you can hear it first. Clicking a notification takes you to that chat, and a needs you notification is taken down by itself once its session moves on. Tori also counts sessions waiting on you on its Dock icon and in the menu bar.
The menu bar icon lists every running session under Needs you, Working and Idle, and says what each waiting one needs: an approval, a question, a budget or a pull request. Clicking a session brings Tori to the front on it, even when its window is minimized or behind another app. Below the sessions, Open Tori, Next Waiting Session, Show Inbox and Quit Tori work the same way, from anywhere.
Whatever the switches say, every one of these moments is listed in the Inbox’s Needs you tab for a day, so a missed one is not lost. See The Inbox.
Other chat settings
Settings > Chat also has:
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Open sessions in | Chat | What a click on a session opens: the chat, or a terminal agent tab |
| Tool output lines | 20 | Lines of a tool’s output shown before it folds. 0 shows everything |
| Show every hook event | Off | Show every hook run, not only failures |
| Collapse agent work | Off | Fold thinking and tool calls between replies |
| Answer the agent’s questions here | On | Show the agent’s questions as a form |
| Attach long pastes as files | On | Long pastes become an attachment |
| Resume at reset | Off | Continue a Claude chat by itself after a usage limit resets |
| Snapshot on each prompt | On | Take the checkpoint that makes turns diffable, revertable and rewindable |
Stream responses and Transcript density are listed in the pane too, but in this version they do not change anything yet.
The Spending group is described in Limits and spending.