---
title: Chat
description: Chat is the everyday entry point — pick an agent, send a message, read the reply. This overview maps the four parts of the screen and points to the page that goes deeper on each.
---

Chat is the everyday entry point to Tale. You open it, pick an agent (or none), type, and a reply streams back — citations, tool calls, and all. Most users spend more time here than in any other tab; everything else in Platform exists to feed Chat with something useful or to govern what it does.

This overview is the shortest page in the section. It names the four parts of the Chat screen, says which other page goes deeper on each, and stops. The deeper pages are where the mechanics live.

## The four parts of the screen

**History** lists the chats you can resume. **New chat** starts a fresh one; **Search chat** filters History by title. The agents picker sits on the composer — pick one before you send and the agent's instructions, knowledge, and tools shape the reply. The model picker sits beside it; **Auto** lets Tale pick for you. The **Canvas** opens to the right of the thread when the agent produces something the inline view cannot hold — long code, a diagram, a structured document.

## Pages in this section

**[Chat basics](/platform/chat/basics)** — what happens between hitting **Send** and the reply landing. Composer, model resolution, streaming, citations.

**[Attachments](/platform/chat/attachments)** — supported file types, where uploads land, when content gets RAG-indexed versus pasted verbatim.

**[Agents in chat](/platform/chat/agents-in-chat)** — picking agents, one-shot versus sticky, switching mid-thread, sub-agent calls.

**[Arena Mode](/platform/chat/arena-mode)** — side-by-side model comparison; how verdicts roll into feedback analytics.

**[Voice mode](/platform/chat/voice-mode)** — speaking instead of typing; STT and TTS handoffs; privacy boundary.

**[Shared chats](/platform/chat/shared-threads)** — sharing a chat with the rest of the org, forking a shared chat into your own.

**[Starters and prompts](/platform/chat/starters-and-prompts)** — agent conversation starters and the prompt library.

**[Canvas pane](/platform/chat/canvas-pane)** — when the Canvas opens, what gets a Canvas versus inline rendering.

## Where this fits

Chat is the surface every other Platform feature ultimately serves. Agents shape its replies, Knowledge feeds its citations, Approvals interrupt it for human checks, Conversations is a sibling inbox for customer channels rather than the user's own threads. The page worth bookmarking first is [Chat basics](/platform/chat/basics) — once you understand the composer-to-reply path, every other chat page reads as a variation on it.
